SONG OF THE BESTIARY
The Song of the Bestiary honors the exuberance of more-than-human animals. Centered on each page are species who have been documented engaging in a form of group sex, reveling in collective pleasure. It is a queer codeswitch that riffs on the 1935 limited edition book, The Song of Songs Which is Solomons, illustrated and hand-illuminated by Valenti Angelo. The book begins with a passage from the Song of Songs that describes a multispecies erotic scene expressed through fecund flora and playful fauna. The passage becomes a gateway to hedonistic erotics within contemporary biomes. The central images of animals are surrounded by dense illustrations of ecosystems, woven through with evidence of extractive economies. At the center of the book, a poem by Donika Kelly offers a further queering of interspecies relationships as the narrator’s body transforms into a menagerie of creatures. The publication offers a celebration of the queer and promiscuous fauna by whom we are surrounded and shaped.
Published with the incredible team at Women's Studio Workshop.