Plains of Apparition

Tasha Ostrander’s photographs are haunted by the memory of big-game hunters and their prey. By layering animal imagery with architectural settings of a bygone era, such as the American Museum of History, the New York Public Library, or the Louvre, Ostrander re-creates for the animals  unnatural habitat and gives voice to the ghost stories that reside in the theatrical display of dioramas. Her visual juxtapositions reanimate the animal kingdom and underscore the often tense coexistence of the natural world and the manmade. The artist has spent time conducting research and photographing at several natural history museums, particularly The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University in Philadelphia, where her relatives donated many of their taxidermied animals as well as archives related to their donations. Like many of the artist’s projects, Plains of Apparition expores what Ostrander’s refers to as the balance of life and death, the natural and spiritual sciences, and the healing, redemptive power of creativity. Through the fragile lives of animals and insects, Ostrander invokes narratives both environmental and existential.   -Laura Addison, 2014