Kim Waldron, installation of "Animal Heads" at the exhibition "La Colonie", 2010.
By Mark Clintberg
In the photograph Bleeding Out (2010), the Montreal-based artist Kim Waldron, dressed simply in a blue quilted vest and plain overalls, stands over the limp body of a sheep lying in its own blood. Behind her are another animal’s bisected carcass and a plastic bin. Nearby there is a broom. The floor is roughly poured concrete. Three distinct handprints made in blood immediately suggest that she has just killed this animal. She has. Her gaze is focused on the broken animal at her feet. Her puzzling facial expression could be read as pensive, troubled, bemused or satisfied. She is in an abattoir. In this case, temporarily at least, it is also the artist’s studio.
Bleeding Out is one in a suite of photographic images that record Waldron’s long-term project Beautiful Creatures (2009 – 2010), for which she learned to slaughter and prepare animals, and then used these skills to harvest various meats for a celebratory feast served to a small East Coast Canadian community [1]. For this project, Waldron acquired skills that are tied to folk practices. From a certain position, the slaughtering of animals for food is a sort of lost knowledge that is nonetheless fundamental to the food and cooking practices of many people today. (more…)
