Audio play for seven voices,
taxidermy of a pheasant used for practicing still-lifes of hunting scenes from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts,
taxidermy of fox and golden jackal used as a touchable demonstration in natural science classes from the National Institute for Blinds,
taxidermy of two crows used as visual aid from a high school.

with: Orsolya Barna and Kitti Gosztola

— Xtro Realm, Studio Gallery, OFF-Biennale Budapest, 2017

Based on a story from the memoir of Lajos Soós, the zoologist of the National Museum’s taxidermies, we rewrote the parable of the Blind man and an elephant. The theme of the original parable, the limitations of our understanding, in our version got new layers. In our story, after the failed attempt to understand the elephant species, based on a literally objectified, killed, and – during the stuffing – resculpted elephant, they visited a captive one in the zoo. They also have listened to the story of a hunter and an animal trainer, and in both of their stories the elephant was anthropomorphized, and the listeners used references from their lives to understand the stories, so they were limited to their human experiences.

"At the time of its founding in 1870, the Hungarian National Museum’s zoological collection comprised a limited number of professional taxidermy, as only a few people practiced the art of animal mounting then. The collection had no experts able to sculpturally reconstruct the figure of an animal, to provide it with a natural quality, and capture its appropriate posture. As a result, the first pieces of the collection were awful, crude works, mere caricatures of their originals. Eventually, the most miserable were replaced with works by international taxidermists or Hungarian craftsmen who had studied abroad. Thus, many of the monstrous domestic animals – favorite dogs, cats, canaries the museum had once inherited – were discarded.
It was the National Institute for the Blind who profited from this, receiving the unwanted items of the zoological collection. They were grateful even for the most pathetic pieces since the only chance for blind students to gain impressions of objects was through touching, which disfigured these educational samples very fast. This is how the institute got to possess the collection’s stuffed zoo elephant, a truly hideous sight..." Lajos Soós