Cut Me Up Issue 8: Guided by Instinct, curated by Naomi White, is a selection of 18 artworks that explore humans’ complex relationships with animals, and the implications these relationships have on our lives and planet. 

In our relationship to animals, there are many contradictions. As John Berger declares in Why Look At Animals, “Animals first entered the imagination as messengers and promises. For example, the domestication of cattle did not begin as a simple prospect of milk and meat. Cattle had magical functions, sometimes oracular, sometimes sacrificial.” We mythologize and revere animals, yet sacrifice, tame, kill and consume them. What does that say about us as a species?

The artists in this issue investigate the dualistic meanings which animals embody and the contradictions in ourselves that this relationship illuminates. Exploring our paradoxical desires to nurture, love, dominate and consume animals, the artists’ responses range from tenderness to concern, from joy to enchantment.

– NAOMI WHITE Artist and Educator

Curatorial prompts for Issue 8 artists:

• Describe your relationship with an animal or animals.

• Envision ways to express this relationship without relying on images of animals.

• Consider incorporating actual or photographed traces of our animal friends (feathers, molted snakeskin, your grandmother’s fur coat).

• Consider incorporating actual or photographed elements of the natural or domestic habitats of animals.

• Embrace the power of collaboration with animals.

• Reflect on the symbolism of animals found in Issue 7 and throughout art history.

• Eligible submissions must incorporate some portion or portions of Cut Me Up: Issue 7.

Naomi White’s original curatorial call for Issue 8 can be found here.

Issue 8 Cover Art:
Suné Woods

Issue 8 Artists:
Sarah Best
Cheryl Chudyk
Bradley Foisset
Carrie Forman
Nina Fraser
Alex Goldberg
Morgane Hebert
Baz Here
Clive Knights
Iain Machell
Michelle L. Miller
Scott Neff
Eleanor Nelson
Amanda Rowan
Rosie Schinners
Laurent Seljan
Rosanne Walsh
Suné Woods

All of the 38 response artworks made by 34 artists for Cut Me Up Issue 8: Guided by Instinct can be found here.