PEST
Born from the attention to roadkill, this project questions how we relate to those beings who best inhabit the worlds humans produce.
The same language is used for undesirable populations that inhabit our spaces, wielded against human and non-human alike, vermin, invasion, dirty. Weapons to isolate and alienate those who could and should be seen as community.
A recognition and reclamation of those identities in myself where previously they have been hidden.
Using words taken from posters seen across Southside Glasgow, and with a crippled, slumped form based on a Burmese zedi, this is the first of a series which enshrines relics of so-called pest animals: Crow, Pigeon, Magpie, Squirrel.
Zedis are sacred structures which house holy relics of the Buddha or other revered teachers. Shwedagon Pagoda, Myanmar's most famous, holds (among other things) eight strands of Gautama's hair.