Postcard from Paris, France: Artistic response to animal artifacts

A vintage postage stamp from France featuring an illustration of a deer, labeled 'Le Cerf', with a natural landscape background and text indicating 'Histoire Naturelle de Buffon'.

Above: Artist Edi Dubien’s addition of a tutu to a stuffed wild boar in the collection of Musee de la Chasse et de la Nature dramatically alters its perceived character.

My word was ignored, it could be heard without hearing it, it could disturb…. I make my characters speak, it’s the wounded childhood that I evoke, this ‘thing’ that comes out of my drawings is a cry, it’s a cry for life.”

Artist Edi Dubien

Your assignment, should you accept it, is to consider an entire museum stretching through the rooms of two historical mansions in Paris as your canvas. You are expected to interact with the immense collection housed within – one that includes paintings of hunting scenes, sculpture and a crowd of mounted deer racks and taxidermized animals of all sizes.

A contemporary artist’s dream commission. The Museum of Hunting and Nature extends the invitation for solo exhibitions to selected artists annually. Founded in 1967 by Jacqueline and Francois Sommer, the museum has broadened its focus from its core collection concentrating on hunting to the relationship between man and animal.

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