Why couldn't shocking art also be endearing?

Butterfly Smit and the service of what is dead

It is an orderly, clean space, not unsociable, despite the pieces of horse bone that dominate the studio in their showcases.

Visual artist Vlindertje Smit prepares animals and parts of animals. Thinking back to the publicity storm created by British artist Damien Hirst with his preserved-animal artworks, one might expect Butterfly Smit to seek sensation. It isn't. The careful and considered way she speaks about her intentions has nothing sensational about it. What Vlindertje wants to convey with her art is precisely tenderness, caring for beings who, like us, have lived on earth. Caring precisely at the moment when they are most helpless: when they will no longer live on, but dead.

"Some people walk around it with a bow," says Butterfly, "But others are moved. Those get it." In any case, this art leaves no one indifferent. "Western society is alienated from death. People are afraid of it. Death is denied. In my art, on the contrary, I don't want to turn away from death. By preparing animals and preventing them from decaying, I allow them to live on in their death-ness."

[Tweet " One of my works is a prepared marten. I just immortalised it as dead as possible. "]

A prepared piece of horse bone was Smit's graduation work at the Rietveld Academy, but she had not learned animal preparation there. For that, she was apprenticed to Dirk Thijssens from Aalten. He gave her the general knowledge, the techniques for setting up horse legs. Later, she followed a preparation course at Bos en Fauna in Schaarsbergen. ,,There I learned to prepare a whole animal according to the classical art of preparation. The aim there is to make the stuffed animal look as alive as possible. In my work, this is not what it is about. One of my works of art is a prepared marten. On the contrary, I have immortalised it as dead as possible. It lies with a drooping neck, an open mouth, no neatly combed fur. Normally a corpse decomposes and disappears. But this marten, immortalised in its dead-ness, will exist longer than the people who behold it now."

When you consider the care with which Butterfly Smit has brought the animal to its eternal situation, you think of the pity a recently deceased animal evokes in you. The emotions you feel at the sight have to do with the fact that death and life are still connected at this moment. You see the drama of the transition from life to death. When decomposition sets in and the body has collapsed into a drab brown stinking heap, the feeling of pity has already disappeared. Emotions pass, people pass, but this art immortalises that one touching moment.

At Butterfly, creativity goes beyond simply preparing an animal. Her artwork 'My Care' consists of the lower part of a horse's leg, whose hoof, like the ankle, she has covered with horse skin and fur. ''Skin is something protective. In real life, a hoof has no fur, but because I also cover it with skin and fur, I leave it extra protected."

Smit was not the first student at the Rietveld Academy to use animal preparation as an art form. But the intention was different. "That artist wanted to keep the animal with her, not abandon it to death." The first artist to work with animal material and really influence Butterfly was Martin uit den Bogaard. But he too differs radically from Smit in important ways. "Uit den Bogaard put a dead animal in a glass case, connected a voltmeter to it and in this way measured the activity associated with the process of decay. That activity, the decay processes and the substances released in the process, fluctuated widely. So at Uit den Bogaard, it is precisely the decay that matters."

Butterfly Smit also has common ground with other artists without coinciding with them in terms of concept. ,,I saw 'For the Love of God' by Damien Hirst, the diamond-encrusted skull, at the Rijksmuseum. I had seen it in pictures, but found it much more impressive in reality. Hirst's work is also about impermanence. He confronts us with the taboo of death by turning a skull into a blingbling object. Death is not ugly. I experience this work by Hirst as a celebration that he puts on to worship death. When you look at his work, you become aware of the grand yet fragile and impressive nature of life ending in death. Hirst is always about philosophical thoughts that his installations incite. For me, the same applies."

Meret Oppenheim also used animal material. Famous is her Cup, Saucer and Spoon of Fur (Cup, saucer and teaspoon, made of fur) from 1936. ,,At the Rietveld Academy, I did get compared to her. But there is still an important difference. Her work is about material. Oppenheim made a living object out of that cup. It was also given an erotic aspect. A cup is actually a utensil, but by making it out of fur, it became unusable. With death, with human and animal life, Oppenheim's work has nothing to do."

Butterfly Smit expresses the engagement between man and animal in a stuffed horse bone with hoof and covered with human skin. ,,I hereby give man a purely serving function towards the dead horse. When the horse was still alive, people decided at some point that it no longer had any economic value and could therefore die. I collected it, at least that piece of leg, and gave it a second chance, a new skin. That's how the horse exists again. In the West, an animal only has a right to exist if it can serve man, as food, for entertainment or as a companion. With this artwork, I want to shed new light on this by making tangible what it is like when that 'serving' and 'being served' is reversed."

From December 2014 to April 2015, Vlindertje Smit will exhibit work at the Verbeke Foundation in Kemzeke near Antwerp. This location is perfect for her work. The museum includes not only a building, but also a garden and greenhouses. Art and culture are integrated with each other at this estate. The owner, Geert Verbeke, deliberately lets weeds grow over the sculptures on the estate. ''He finds other museums too static, too organised with their austere white rooms. He has his own concept. When I contacted him to ask if I could exhibit there, he reacted sceptically at first, but when he saw what I make, he was immediately enthusiastic."

Besides objects, a short film by Vlindertje Smit will also be on show. She shot footage in a horse slaughterhouse. The film footage touches the viewer emotionally deep. Isn't the maker afraid that her work will be seen as activist art, as a protest against eating animals? ,,No, the film is about a personal event. It is about grief and losing innocence. That is separate from the meat industry."

 

* Open studio: Sat 27 & Sun 28 September 2014, 12.00 - 18.00, Haagweg 4, Leiden

* Exhibition: so 23 November 2014 to April 2015, Verbeke Foundation, Kemzeke near Antwerp