Rhiannon Radu, BFA
Rhiannon Radu creates tension in these works by offering a sentimental lens through which to examine unpleasant encounters, grotesque imagery, and bodily pain and discomfort. Through an emotionally driven and careful treatment of materials, her work reflects a desire to preserve and memorialize the nightmarish and delightfully sensuous qualities of animal and human bodies.
Rhiannon is compelled to explore her own visceral reactions to abject bodies, specifically in regard to taxidermy and roadkill. In her work, she manifests dualities of attraction and repulsion; fascination and fear; comfort and discomfort in sentimental objects laden with the desire to immortalize the corporeal.
The Victorian era, with its prominent mourning culture fascination with the transience of life, and obsession with death, informs Rhiannon’s work. Objects of morbid curiosity, like memento mori and Wunderkammer are specific points of reference, as they exude a beguiling enchantment with the macabre and the “abject.”
In making these objects and jewelry, Rhiannon reconsiders perceptions of animal and human bodies, subverting which bodies we give priority to in death and mourning.
