We Were Never Really Strangers

Brendan O’Shaughnessy, MFA 2024, Fiber and Material Studies

My practice is driven by concerns of climate change, technoscience, and luxury consumerism. Why do we seek pleasure at the expense of ethics? How do we perceive what is ‘natural’ and what is ‘artificial’ in our increasingly troubled world? Drawing references from haute couture, industrial livestock production, body modification, and the Catholic Eucharist, I propose new ecologies that transgress the binaries between ‘nature’ and ‘artifice’, human and nonhuman, and host and parasite. With works that span the senses of taste, smell, and sight, my projects invite viewers to indulge in these ecologies.  Made with edible materials such as gelatin and glycerin, as well as petrochemicals, intestinal submucosa, and satin, my sculptures are imbued with perverse beauty. Eliciting attraction and aversion, my works reflect our multifaceted concept of body as it relates race, gender, sexuality, technology, and species.  My most recent exhibition, We Have Never Been Strangers, embodies and expands the unsettling ecologies that have emerged from the colonial desire for domination over ‘nature’ and the capitalist pursuit of beauty.