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AssetID : 22266113
Headline : Taxidermy Art
Caption : Dutch artist Noortje Zijlstra works from her loft studio in an old deserted school overlooking a working class suburb in The Hague - creating "dead animal" art.
As seen at her recent Rotterdam Festival of Contemporary Art exhibition, Zijlstra, 28, uses taxidermy as her chosen medium to re-create animals as extreme fusings - fashioning a freakish twist from a traditional practise to shock and even revolt the viewer.
From multicoloured sugar coated mice, to a white rat with wooden stilts as legs. A stuffed squirrel with a test-tube mounted down its throat which functions as a flower-holder, or dove's head mounted on a shuttlecock. Then there's "Drumstick" - a chick leg on a wooden stand covered in feathers.
SHE obtains the animals she uses for her art from friends (and friends of friends) who find them on the road, street or in the woods.
She says: "Lots of people think of me immediately when they see a dead animal. Also, I have a friend who works at "staatsbosbeheer" (forestry commission) who, also, gives me animals sometimes. Subjects that motivate her work includes humour and a touch of cynicism alongside a wide range of issues, from: a broken heart, to how we deal with animals and the food industry. The results can be in the form of an object, installation or photograph.
She says: "The food industry often features in my art. I don't use dead animals to shock, rather I want people to think. My art has a lot to do with the concept that you are what you eat. And I am vegetarian."
Zijlstra freely admits her work may not be to the taste of many observers. However, as well as the importance of the aesthetic, she hopes her art serves as a catalyst for conversation.
She says: "The people who get angry with my work don't understand how I can be a vegetarian and skin dead animals. But the animals I use are deceased already or have been shot by people with perfect knowledge of flora and fauna, and they kill these animals because it's needed. For me it would be more weird to leave a dead animal on the side of the road then to take it with me and make a work with it.
"A friend of mine told me lately her chicken died, a beautiful chicken. So I thought she was going to tell me she had put it in the fridge for me, but than she told me: 'Yeah I thought of you, but I just couldn't do that to myself, giving the chicken to you'.
"So I understood completely and said: 'Oh no how sad for the chicken. So you buried her?'
" And here comes the weird part. She replied: 'No, I threw it in the bin'!
"What i want to say is: I love animals, a lot, but when they are dead I love to use them as material. I make my work because i feel I have to make it. It is up to the viewer to form an opinion of my work. The formation of those opinions and the discussion that comes out of it is my interest. From the discussions arises intensification concerning the subject. From different perspectives arises new knowledge. Awareness and knowledge are the ultimate outcome.
"Although the art aesthetic is most important to me, it would be a perfect for people to appreciate the art and also 'get the message'. Getting the message is important when my work is about food and animal abuse, but when it's about something else like the piece of work 'Untitled' - which i made to get over my broken heart - it's not necessary that people know the background story behind it."
Noortje Zijlstra's taxidermy art can be seen at A Gallery Named Sue in Den Haag.

Mandatory Credit: Ninette Schostack/WENN.com
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