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- Énoncé de l'artiste : Terry Graff

My work explores the semiotic environment of the animal in contemporary society, drawing attention to anthropocentric constructs projected onto nonhuman nature. I am concerned with identifying and decoding images of animals native to the Atlantic bioregion in which I live, examining how these images can be read as bearers of accepted opinion and of ideological manipulation. For example, dead deer strapped to vehicles and paraded down Main Street in Sackville during hunting season, the proliferation of massmedia lobster images on billboards designed for tourists traveling to Shediac, the displaced animals in zoo cages as part of the entertainment at Moncton's Magnetic Hill theme park, the wide range of animal kitsch sold as souvenirs, the institutionalized waterfowl impoundments managed by Ducks Unlimited, and Sackville's Waterfowl Park and annual Waterfowl Celebration, are not isolated aberrations, but can be interpreted as manifestations of the dominant paradigm of our culture -- the assumption that human beings have the right to dominate and control animal existence, to treat wildlife as an object for bourgeois consumption. By parodying local examples of our estrangement from the animal world, the loss of animals as nonhuman mirrors, I seek to provoke questions about our ancient somatic history, the human need for animals in strengthening ties to the unconscious and the spiritual, for reclaiming the body as a way of knowing, and for relocating our mythical embeddedness in "place".

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