The characters of Animalia, Malia Jensen’s show of recent work at the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, inhabit the ambivalent space of the fairy tale where social codes mask a pervasive sexuality. Capitalizing on our uneasy relationship with the natural world, Jensen has assembled a cast of gentle woodland creatures immobilized by choices or mutely aware of their inescapable natures. These allegories about carnality, progress and gender roles are pitched from a thankfully unfeminine—yet definitely female—point of view. Do what we might to place ourselves above our animal friends, we are, like them, “stuck in our own natures.” But just how the story gets told depends not a little on who does the telling.
At the entrance to the exhibit is Mr. & Mrs. Grouse, a life-size rendition of the game birds bowing and pecking companionably on a shelf. The title recalls the way children’s stories not only anthropomorphize the animal world, but also slather everything over with a veneer of respectability. These are not just any pair of birds doing what birds do, but next-door neighbors of the Little Red Hen. Except in this instance, they have been fashioned carefully out of cow dung. No substance could be more natural, yet few are less socially acceptable as objects of contemplation.
