The Former Owner

Since humans exist, they have been extracting material from other life forms for their own use. But connection with the natural origin of what we use has been increasingly out of sight. This is partly due to industrialisation, but also to views rooted in Western thinking. Since Greek philosophy, a line has been drawn between the human and the non-human.

Sheep were domesticated some 11,000 years ago. I wonder how sheep and humans have shaped each other during such a long shared history and how we can move beyond the limited idea of the sheep as a somewhat silly, tame utility animal.

I got the fleeces of Rotterdam sheep from the local shepherd. These I partly dyed with natural dyes. At the same time, each fleece bears traces of its original owner's behaviour and character. When processing, I've try not to lose sight of the sheep.

Toison 11. Sheep's wool, Japanese knotweed, iron citrate, 130/110/15 cm 2020

In the work itself, the human/animal balance proved difficult to maintain. I succeeded only when the human element in my work was in a significant minority. It appears from this that we are so used to scanning our environment for human elements that it makes it difficult to focus our attention elsewhere.

I wonder if this also applies to sheep. Perhaps when seeing my work, they would only notice the information in the wool?

For this project, I spent a lot of time researching, reading and analysing scientific studies on sheep.

While the studies on the intelligence of these animals were remarkable, dismantling our thinking patterns and judgements about animals was even more instructive. The conclusions I drew from this literature were published in seven articles on social media.

These articles also formed the base of the video essay.

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