Ashley Snook

Ashley Snook - Yoga Feline

Yoga Feline, 2013
oil on wood panel
30″ x 40″
Price: contact artist

The basis of my work examines relationships and power binaries between the non-human animal and human animal and takes a critical view of ethology, the study of the non-human animal in its environment and their similar behaviors to the human animal. I use the deconstruction of ethology, animalism and identity politics to question the conventional hierarchy that grants the non-human animal lower status than the human animal that has been formed throughout history.

The work Yoga Feline shows a man in a strenuous yoga pose but is also questionable as it is similar to a typical hygienic routine pose of a cat. By the combination of humanistic and animalistic acts, I am questioning what it is to be human as the capability to understand ‘otherness’ is beyond our capacity as human animals.

In examining relationships and power binaries between the non-human animal and human animal, I disregard social values of humanism in order to produce work that emphasizes the other side of the animal-human divide.