Spotlight on Divya Anantharaman
/BY CARA SCHAEFER
It might feel a little counterintuitive to learn about life from death, but for Divya Anantharaman, taxidermy has offered many lessons. We spoke with Divya about recreating animals, the wonder of stillness, and nature’s idiosyncrasies.
Photos courtesy of Divya Anantharaman. Horizontal images courtesy of Matthew and Elizabeth Myer Boulton.
OUT THERE: For those who are not familiar with the practice, what is taxidermy?
DIVYA ANANTHARAMAN: Taxidermy is a scientific art form. From the Greek root words, it roughly translates into moving skin or arranging skin. And all that means is that taxidermy is done to replicate an animal using the animal's skin onto an anatomically accurate form. So the only thing real in taxidermy — the only thing original to the animal — is the skin. So the eyes are recreated, the body forms are recreated, everything else of their anatomy is recreated.
OT: How did you get started doing taxidermy?
DA: It was a hobby at first. I always liked taxidermy. I thought it was really beautiful. Growing up in a big city, I went to natural history museums, and that's often how I would experience nature. I would see the taxidermy, and I was just amazed by how beautiful those animals were. It felt so special to be able to be in front of something like a lion, or a giraffe, or a zebra. It let me experience those animals, and have that stillness with them, and kind of get to know what the animals look like and how they behave, what their habitats are. I collected books on taxidermy, and was like, ‘One day I'll do this.’
And once I finally had a place of my own, I was like, ‘Alright, cool, I'm gonna start collecting old supplies and things like that.’ And I just started doing it as a hobby. The first thing I mounted was a squirrel. It was a piece of roadkill that I found while I was out hiking somewhere.
OT: What's the process you go through to create a taxidermy mount or display?
DA: So first is obtaining the specimen. I usually buy them, but occasionally people donate specimens to me. If it's something for an educational client, they usually supply the specimen themselves, because a lot of educational clients want to mount things that are protected for public display. The next step would be storing the specimen, so freezing it. Then to start, you thaw the specimen out, and you skin the specimen. That's removing the skin from the body, which is done pretty carefully. I mostly work on birds, so they can be fairly delicate compared to some mammals.
Once the skin is removed, it's then cleaned and flushed. Anything that could possibly rot, anything that could possibly prevent the skin from absorbing a preservative, is removed. So you're removing fat. You're removing connective tissue. You’re removing all of that stuff, so all you have left is just a nice clean skin that's been washed. Another thing that we'll do is degrease the skin, because sometimes certain skins can have a lot of fat or oil in them. And then once that's done, then a preservative is applied to the skin.
Usually while the skin is being preserved and tanned, I'm multitasking and making an anatomically accurate taxidermy form. Once you’ve made your form, you mount your skin onto it, sew it up, and then you also have the finishing work, which is sort of the fine details. So — going off of birds — painting the feet on a bird, or painting any of the soft tissue that might have faded through the preservation process. And resculpting anything that might have shrunk, like soft tissue such as eyelids or the tissue that’s around the face or beak. Once that finishing work is done, it's placed in a habitat or on a base, and then that's your finished piece of taxidermy.
OT: How do you think taxidermy can be used to spark wonder and curiosity about the natural world?
DA: I love going birding. I also love getting outside. There's a great value in being in nature, whether it's in a local park or a grand trip to a particular destination. But with taxidermy, you can kind of meet nature anywhere. If someone has taxidermy in their home, or someone goes and sees it in a museum or a restaurant, it gets the average person — who's not a professional that works in or around wildlife — to think about animals. And I think there's really great value in that, that's often overlooked.
Another thing that taxidermy offers us is stillness. Doing something like bird watching, you're really just seeing this little blur in your binoculars, and conferring with people on field marks and other identifying factors to make sure that the bird you saw is the bird you think you saw. With taxidermy, there's no mistaking what you're seeing. But it’s not just about the accuracy; I think that stillness also gives us stillness in ourselves. And it lets us think about our mortality, and animals, and all of these concepts in a way that shows a different sort of connection than just going somewhere, seeing something is moving around, and then going away. You can sit next to — and I've done this before — certain dioramas for hours, and just look at everything in there. I think that stillness inspires a different type of wonder, and a different type of contemplation, in people.
OT: What's something that you yourself have learned about nature from observing the taxidermy animals you work with?
DA: One of the most surprising lessons that I’ve learned is about birds. Birds are MUCH smaller than their feather loft. For example, this owl may look like it's football sized, but its body is maybe the size of my fist, and everything in between is all fluffed out feathers. It's made me find some wonder in knowing that nature sort of has all these mysteries that we don't know about until we get close to them.
And also seeing the asymmetries and imperfections. Because often, taxidermy is very much about the most idealized form of a creature. Or something being this sort of old, colonial idea of the trophy of the most majestic beast — or the most idealized version of an animal. Whereas for me, taxidermy is all about that individual animal, and all of its imperfections, and everything about it that doesn't make it a “trophy.”
OT: Has taxidermy changed the way you think about the cycles of life as well?
DA: Absolutely. I think what I hear the most from people who are new to taxidermy, or people who have this preconceived notion of it, is that taxidermy is sad, and that death is really sad. Which it is, I mean no one looks forward to that. No one wants death to happen. But death is also a natural part of the life cycle. Knowing that has helped me live better. Knowing that time is limited, and seeing a reminder of that every day, has made me value the limited time that I have even more.
