Laura Kuusk
The Strategies of Adaptation (Composite Creatures)
2020
The work The Strategies of Adaptation (Composite Creatures) is a two-sided display stage. Inside the exhibition space the visitor has a chance to navigate around the work and engage with the objects on display, presented in a way that resembles a shop display where clothes and other desirable items are presented to lure customers in. At nighttime, the display is visible to passersby from outside the exhibition space and transforms into a shop window. The installation is composed of different skin-like pieces of clothing, protection and items of camouflage used to cover the body. Are these items to be desired or repelled, to be touched or pushed away, are they meant to protect or to expose? What is their precise origin? Since the natural environment is a hybrid of artificial, semi-biological and semi-technological processes, the question of imitation or integration of natural-looking is highlighted in this work: a natural look, or a protection against actual nature.