Animal Re-enchantment: Tales of Caution and Care

Animal Re-enchantment: Tales of Caution and Care

Animal Re-enchantment: Tales of Caution and Care is an original installation consisting of a European red fox sculpture, a native dingo and video projection of close-up stitching actions juxtaposed by bats in flight. The work was created as part of the Australasian Animal Studies Association 2026 Conference Exhibition, “Centring Animals Across the Disciplines” on November 5-7, 2025 and was showcased in direct alignment with my paper presentation (under the same title).

The project explores the use of contemporary textile sculptures that centralise animal imagery as poetic ways of cautioning and addressing notions of trauma. My emphasis on animal motifs and their capacity to (re-) enchant audiences are inspired by dark fairytales deriving from my Polish-heritage. These animal motifs take on a craft-based folklore form, with an emphasis on hand-sewing, weaving, patching and knitting as a way of enacting care for these animal characters. Interestingly, they become a strange entanglement between human and animal associations. More broadly, the work explores the role of textile art and the way that animal character story telling can be subversively stitched into the fibres of our social, cultural and environmental wellbeing. rt within this body of work is a means of processing and (a)mending of trauma(s) by making visible - via animal motifs - the cautionary and re-enchanting tales of animal and human connections. Experimental approaches are applied within textile art forms where their materiality and processes are metaphorically charged with a traumatic past as well as with human notions of care through the laborious acts of hand stitching. In this way, the works are visual and experiential expressions of the many dimensions of experiencing and conveying caution and care between animals and humans as well as a means of exploring and (a)mending embodied trauma.