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"These hand-embroidered works document recently extinct animals on pieces of recycled bed sheets. The making process is slow, careful and therapeutic, contrasting the physical violence and relative speed with which these species were driven to extinction.
"The great auk was a flightless bird aggressively hunted off North Atlantic coasts in the early 19th Century, until the species' extinction in 1844.
"Herds of quagga were previously located in South Africa until human hunting eliminated the population. The last known quagga died in the London Zoo in 1872.
"At the start of the 19th Century, there were billions of passenger pigeons in eastern North America, but by 1914, the last one died in the Cincinnati Zoo. Settlers had completely eliminated the species, motivated by commerce in city markets.
"The Tasmanian tiger native to Australia, Tasmania, and New Guinea is thought to have gone extinct due to bounty hunting, likely exacerbated by disease and loss of habitat caused by human intervention. By 1936 the last Tasmanian tiger died in a private zoo located in Hobart, Tasmania.
"I started making this work in the context of the pandemic, with a hyper-awareness of human vulnerability and the race against time with the vaccine. Embroidery is traditionally associated with domestic space and women's work. In the context of a species extinction, I am thinking about this process in terms of care, protection and habitat management."
Christina Freeman (b. 1983) is a maker and organizer of visual records. Freeman's projects have been featured in Artforum, Vulture, Hyperallergic, Art F City, Brooklyn Paper, Frieze, and Observer. She was previously a Culture Push Associated Artist (2018-2019); an artist-in-residence at ARoS Public (2018), Flux Factory (2016-2018), Heliopolis (2014), SOMA (2012) and Galerìa Pérdida (2012). Her projects have been exhibited internationally, including Creative Time Summit X, New York (2019); Queens Museum (2018-2019); ARoS Public, Aarhus, Denmark (2018); TEM market, Volos, Greece (2013); and Red House, Sofia, Bulgaria (2012). Freeman received an MFA from CUNY Hunter College (2012).
Cataclysm is funded in part by the New York State Council on the Arts and the
New York City Department of Cultural Affairs
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