Heather Pennell
Leporidae
digital photograph, Styrofoam, paper-mâché mask / 60" x 43"
In folklore worldwide, rabbits often emerge as trickster archetypes using intelligence and speed to outwit others. The rabbit I constructed slips between ranges of psychological issues: dominance/submission, dreams/wakefulness, animal/human, and predator/prey while holding qualities of broader rabbit archetypes. My subjects exist in a moment between life and death under the rabbit’s spell. The viewer is left to question if the rabbit is real. Would he appear if the subject were awake and well? The subject must submit; the rabbit dwells in her thoughts as the problem that won’t go away, owning pieces of her mind.