Nicci Bailey

VIRTUAL TOUR

Canis Familiaris

In this body of work, I explore ideas of entangled relationships between humans and companion species. The history of this complex association reaches back thousands of years, From Canis Lupis, the grey wolf to Canis Familiaris, our domestic dogs. Still coevolving, ours is an interdependent experience. Dreaming, a function of consciousness is shared by a myriad of life forms. Dreams are only knowable to the dreamer, in animals and other life forms where there is no spoken language to communicate this sensory consciousness, we need to imagine their oneiric journeys. My four-legged companions and I sleep, our dreams inhabiting an imperceptible space and comingling, where are the boundaries of these intangible visions? 

The materials I have used to manifest the work speak to the illusive and temporal nature of dreams. My beloved dog brings me a leaf every day when I get home, which I have collected and cast in bronze. Hands and paws cast in beeswax placed on a heated steel sheet will melt and reveal the gift of a bronze leaf, symbolic of this daily ritual of welcome. Monochromatic videos reflected in dog bowls of water suggest the otherworldly and fluid nature of the unconscious. Shadows are considered in my sculptural works, alluding to the duplicitous shadow self that occasionally inhabits our dream state. 

My intention is to present the sensation of the spaces within which these animals exist in their level of daily consciousness and self-awareness. This in turn speaks to a value system that embodies a more inclusive and nonhierarchical multi-species future.