Victoria Fuller: Bring Back the Extinct Northern White Rhino: artist talk with puppet performance by Jill Liebhaber
@ Epiphany Hall at Epiphany Center for the Arts
201 S Ashland Ave, Chicago, IL 60607
Opening Saturday, August 20th, from 6PM - 8PM
On view through Saturday, August 20th
Come meet Juliette, a giant rhino puppet commissioned by Chicago kids and family photographer, Jill Liebhaber, to help bring awareness to rhino conservation at the local level. See the giant puppet in action and get a free souvenir photo taken with the puppet up close at Epiphany Center for the Arts on Saturday August 20th from 6 – 7 p.m. in support of the work of artist Victoria Fuller and her life-size inflatable rhino installation titled “Bring Back the Extinct Northern White Rhino.” children are encouraged to visit the puppet performance with adult supervision!
Afterwards, join us for an artist talk and Q&A session at 7 p.m. in the Sacristy Gallery with artist Victoria Fuller!
This program is held in conjunction with the exhibition Bring Back The Extinct Northern White Rhino by Victoria Fuller
Bring Back the Extinct Northern White Rhino is Victoria Fuller’s tribute to a species of animal that is functionally extinct. The last male northern white rhinoceros, named Sudan, died in 2018. There are two females left. This installation features a realistic life-size replica of a rhino, 13’ x 5’.5” x 4,’ made of vinyl material with a hide of printed faux wrinkles and texture. It inflates and deflates repetitively on a 3 minutes cycle. When deflated, we are reminded that it is extinct; when inflated, it references the magnificence of the species when it was alive, as well as the attempt to bring it back through “artificial reproductive techniques” with frozen sperm and eggs implanted in a closely related subspecies. The inflation and deflation are also like inhaling and exhaling lungs, symbolizing the breath of life. Fuller created the project with a grant from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs (DCASE) to bring awareness to the extinction of animals in our lifetime.
The idea for making this artwork started with Fuller’s observation of the sad piles of deflated holiday lawn decorations that slump on people’s lawns when the air is taken out of them. Like those lawn decorations, rhinos and many other wild animals are treated like a commodity, with no value as living things beyond the price they can bring at market. Rhinoceroses are killed illegally by poachers for their horns, which are used in the Chinese medicine trade. Other species like the pangolin and bats are used for meat and also used in Chinese medicine. The loss of this animal is a cautionary tale. Human hunting of wild animals and encroachment on their habitats is causing their extinction, and we must do all we can to stop these magnificent creatures from going extinct.
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Tags: Bring Back The Extinct Northern White Rhin, Bring Back The Extinct Northern White Rhino, Chicago, Jill Liebhaber, near west side, Victoria Fuller, Victoria Fuller: Bring Back the Extinct Northern White Rhino
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