KATY B PLUMMER

THE HOOVED AND THE CLAWED, 2017

Multiple videos and mixed media. Dimensions and timing variable.

First shown in Galerie Pompom, October 2017.

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THE HOOVED AND THE CLAWED is an installation project using video, textiles, sculpture and ceramics to tell the story of a doomed romance between a lion and a sheep. It uses, as its starting point, Ibsen's 1878 play A Doll's House, in which a young woman (NORA) suffers the realisation that her husband does not in fact see her as an actual person. In the play, once this realisation sinks in, she simply walks out into the night, abandoning him, their three children, and the only version of herself she has ever known. 

 

In THE HOOVED AND THE CLAWED, this narrative is conflated with another story about a domesticated lion, released into the wild. In this new version, Nora explodes into the huge, bright, terrifying world, completely disconnected from her instincts. She falls in love with a sheep, confusing her intense hunger for intense attachment. The two species, neither native to their environment, tangle viscerally, their bodies a site for their collective confusion. This project allows us to spy on Nora as she disgracefully attempts to get her bearings in a foreign landscape. We cross our fingers and hope she will eventually remember what kind of creature she is.