How the Rhinoceros Got its Skin

2022. Video, color, sound, 10:00 min.

How the Rhinoceros Got its Skin incorporates personal narrative, film, radio, and archival footage to consider the rhinoceros’ enduring position in the colonial imagination, beginning in the Classical era, through European Imperialism, Modernism, and Fascism. The video follows the creature’s synonymy with art, simulacra, and capital over time as it became an endangered species in the natural world. The work takes its title from the Rudyard Kipling just-so story of the same name. 

A Big Game

2022 Inkjet print on cotton rag paper 18 in. x 12 in.

A Big Game uses a 1905 article published in The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News magazine, covering a big game hunting exhibition by the Imperial British East Africa Company. The print deconstructs the original article, eliminating most of the text to focus on the documentation of the rhinoceros hunt and a few notable lines in the piece to foreground how hunting expeditions were mythologized to promote the endless consumption of finite natural resources.