The Rhinoceros Project
The Rhinoceros Project (formerly here) begins with Albrecht Durer’s woodcut, The Rhinoceros, and has spent the past two years conducting traveling, participatory sewing circles, primarily in the Bay Area, to embroider a life-size (7 x 9’) version of Durer’s print. This embroidery will in turn be used as a matrix to create an edition of watermarks in handmade paper to commemorate the, now two, remaining Northern White Rhinoceros. The watermark is a ghostly image, and the intention throughout the project is to create space for conversations on loss, extinction, value systems, and revitalization.
Anne Beck and Michelle Wilson launched the Rhinoceros Project in September 2016. The first act of the project travelled to sixteen sites – some for just one day, some for longer residencies – hosting sewing circles where all were welcome to add stitches to the Rhinoceros and engage in dialogue. While engaged in the intimate, meditative act of sewing together, our participants become friends, and discuss endangered species, how their plight relates to human activity and globalization, and how our values need to change. Together, through a shared sewing circle, a community is built.
Albrecht Durer’s The Rhinoceros commemorates the 1515 landing of an Indian Rhinoceros in Lisbon. As a gift from a sultan to a king and the first to be seen in Europe in 1000 years, it was a nearly mythic creature, a true Unicorn. In his Nuremberg workshop, Durer based his image on a sketch & descriptive account, never having seen the creature himself. Notably, the actual animal depicted in The Rhinoceros was re-gifted to Pope Leo to curry favor for ongoing Portuguese Imperialism & drowned in a shipwreck, shackled below deck, on the way to Rome. In 2011, the Western Black Rhinoceros was declared extinct, and as of 2016, the Northern White Rhinoceros is down to only three remaining animals. As this species is decimated and fades once again from human memory, Durer’s print will become a significant relic. As an early colonial displacement, the rhinoceros foreshadows the most pressing environmental issues in our postcolonial world.
The project has taken on a new act in 2018, based on Albrecht Durer’s 1524 Map of Tenochtitlan. See here for more details.
Click on any image below to enlarge and open a slideshow.
