Underland Gallery is thrilled to announce its first exhibition of the summer, Kindred Spirits: Honoring Animals in Death. After a season’s hiatus, the gallery will raise its curtain on Friday, July 22nd from 5:30-8:30PM for the opening reception, and Saturday, July 23rd from 5:30-8:30PM for an artist talk.
What does it look like when we extend reverence to animals in death? Why don’t we afford these creatures the same honor and acknowledgement as our own deceased? Why do we, as a society, overlook these encounters with death, a fate that binds us all? These are the questions that Amanda Stronza and Rachel Ivanyi explore in their joint exhibition, Kindred Spirits. Stronza is an anthropologist, conservationist and photographer based in Austin, Texas. She painstakingly creates exquisite memorials for the bodies of animals that she finds: individuals who are often disregarded as “roadkill”. Ivanyi is an award winning artist, art educator and illustrator with a background in scientific illustration, based out of Tucson, Arizona. Her scrupulously rendered paintings and drawings sit in delicate conversation with Amanda’s memorial photographs. Ivanyi’s work allows viewers the time to take in the gravity of loss as it pertains to these animal others.
With sensitivity and stillness, Stronza and Ivanyi grant us a moment of reflection; reflection on the robust lives their subjects led, and a reflection on the circumstances of their demise. These memorials extend the time-honored tradition of death rituals that we humans have shared for ages to the animals felled by an ever-encroaching human infrastructure.
Hannah Salyer, a fellow artist, illustrator, and author, is the curator of this exhibition. She has worked in careful collaboration with Stronza and Ivanyi to design and enmesh elements of this multifaceted show while drawing on her own practice to craft the interactive details presented throughout the space. Salyer and The Moo Ampapatshara, a local floral artist, have co-conceptualized and installed a site-specific shrine that will go through its own lifecycle whilst in exhibition.
Kindred Spirits is a journey into seeing and honoring animals in death, tending to them with love, and recognizing them as kin.
Underland Gallery, a newly opened art space in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, was founded in 2021 by local artists to house stories and help foster the creative threads of the South Brooklyn arts community.
Kindred Spirits: Honoring Animals in Death will open July 22, 2022 and close on September 22, 2022.
