Jenna Merritt - 2024

Artist's Statement

The Bluebuck is an extinct species of antelope. They lived in South Africa until about 1800, when the last of the species were hunted and killed by people. Their numbers were already dwindling, but people finished them off. There are only four mounted skins of bluebucks and only a handful of horns and other skeletal parts left in the world. There are only a small number of depictions/ illustrations of the bluebuck as well. I wanted to focus on a lesser-known extinct animal that was negatively impacted by humans. The bluebuck is a flashy enough animal that, if it were facing extinction today, it would have stood a fighting chance and caught the eyes of the public, unlike so many of the endangered animals today. This piece, which is made up of just reproduced paper mache horns, ties back to the true scarcity of physical reminders of this species from our not-too-distant past.