VIKTOR WYND (BRITISH): SELF PORTRAIT AS A KITTEN

the taxidermy animal dressed in a tuxedo

118cm high

Please note this lot is subject to VAT on the hammer price at 20%.

Provenance: Viktor Wynd’s Museum, London.

Wynd writes: "I’ve always fancied myself as a goat, a sort of deformed Leprechaun. At more than one of my parties I’ve even dressed up as one and had a lot of fun. So I set about casting my own body and creating a mannequin of myself, but with a taxidermy goats head, ibex horns and cows feet and legs beneath the shins. Once made I put him in my clothes and expected to have a good laugh, but strangely something else happened, I felt an odd attraction to this creature, I enjoyed getting him dressed and undressed, trying on different clothes. I found myself moving the creature to the breakfast table and talking to it, a lot. One evening, feeling particularly lonely and miserable I dressed it in my silk pajamas and took him to bed. I found he was soft and cuddly and that I slept better than I’d slept for weeks. Since then I’ve been making a few more, a family of Self-Portraits, a family of friends, including this kitten (made of cow skin) that has, until very recently, been sitting at the Sarcophagus Table in the museum, I’m planning to do a pig next."

The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & UnNatural History is a contemporary reinterpretation of a Pre-Enlightenment Wunderkabinett or Cabinet of Curiosities. It is the creation of artist and writer Viktor Wynd, who has just opened a Falmouth branch of his museum inside the National Maritime Museum. His most recent book 'The UnNatural History Museum' was published by Prestel in 2020.