Mourning the Mounted: An Analysis of the Taxidermy Exhibition Dead Animals with a Story

Abstract

This article analyzes the taxidermy exhibition Dead Animals with a Story located in the Natural History Museum of Rotterdam in order to discover the subversive potentiality of taxidermy. Through granting the taxidermy animals subjectivity, by recognizing human and non-human kinship, and by creating accountability towards animal suffering, Dead Animals with a Story sets the stage for the animals to be deemed grievable. This points to the potential of the exhibition to reshape pre-established social and cultural boundaries between the human and the animal, which becomes ever so important in a world marked by extinction and loss.

Keywords

• Animal Studies. Human-animal relationship. Mourning. New taxidermy. Taxidermy