Mark Dion (b.1961) is an American artist who, in making his art,
metamorphoses into explorer, biochemist, detective and archaeologist. In
his gallery installations around Europe and America since the 1980s,
Dion has constructed the laboratories, experiments and museum caches of
the great historical naturalists - following in their footsteps in his
own adventurous, eco-inspired journeys to the tropics. His research and
magical collections are presented in installational still lifes that
combine taxidermic animals with lab equipment artefacts, like
walk-through Wunderkammers and life-sized cabinets of curiosity.
Lias Graziose Corrin, Director of the Williams College Museum of Art,
surveys Dion's most significant works and his ongoing investigations
into natural history's obsession with categorizing nature. Critic and
theorist Miwon Kwon talks to the artist about the interface between
ecology and culture and the phenomenon of site-specific art. Norman
Bryson, Professor of Art History at the University of California, San
Diego, makes an iconographical analysis of The Library for the Birds of
Antwerp, an indoor sculpture Dion constructed for 18 live African
finches in 1993. The artist has selected a text by novelist Jon Berger,
one of the first post-war thinkers to analyze the position of animals in
a capitalist society. The book also features Dion's own provocative,
witty and often lyrical writing on nature and his role as an artist
engaged in environmental issues.
