Audio descriptions: Artworks in the exhibition Ken + Julia Yonetani: To Be Human
Ken + Julia YONETANI, Dysbiotica – Deer 1 2020, porcelain clay. Photo by MIYAJIMA Kei. ©︎ Ken + Julia Yonetani. Courtesy of Mizuma Art Gallery
Dysbiotica – Deer 1 by Ken and Julia Yonetani, 2020.
This work is made from porcelain clay and measures 93 centimetres high by 67 centimetres wide and extends 37 centimetres out from the wall.
Resembling the head of a deer mounted on the wall for the purpose of display, the work is consistent with the art of taxidermy and, as such, is lifelike in its portrayal and size. The head is stark white in colour and its antlers stretch out and upwards commanding the space around it. The black wall creates a strong colour contrast between the deer head and its background.
The deer’s antlers are reminiscent of coral in their texture and form, with branch-like tentacles comparable to those of a male deer, or stag. The deer’s face, ears and neck is covered in porcelain forms that appear as coral attached and growing out and across the surface of the deer’s face. Some are akin to barnacles, stuck fast and consistent with those found on the underside of rocks on the seashore. A variety of coral forms gather down the length of the deer’s neck and conglomerate on its fur coat, some coiling and snake-like, while others gather to a point like soft spikes clustered and growing upon the deer of their own accord.
The artists describe this concentration as a colonisation of coral-like microbes, at times both disturbing and pleasing, with the intense whiteness reminiscent of bleached coral and microbes. This juxtaposition, the merging of two ideals or images, is reinforced further with the deer head as hunting trophy and the deer’s symbolism as a god of nature in Japan. The title of the work, Dysbiotica,is a term the artists conceived to describe the state of dysbiosis. Dysbiosis describes an imbalance of a living system’s microbiota: that is the microorganisms fundamental to the creature’s functions. Ken and Julia Yonetani use the term Dysbiotica to suggest that this breakdown is systemic in our contemporary world: in humans, in coral reefs, and in numerous living creatures impacted by environmental toxins, habitat destruction, and climate change.