Deborah Simon

Flayed Rabbit: Albino with Nerves

Polymer clay, faux fur, linen, embroidery floss, acrylic, glass, wire, foam

"Over the past few years, my work has focused on two of the most anthropomorphized animals in our culture, bears and rabbits. The sculptures of these animals become inverted anatomies showing their interior organ structures embroidered on the body's surface or through translucent skin. Fragile and vulnerable, the sculptures examine our attitudes, perceptions, and cultural concepts against the reality of the animal, expressing the wild and the tame, the beautiful and grotesque."

— Deborah Simon

About the artist

Deborah Simon

American

Deborah Simon focuses on humanity’s discordant relationship with animals. Pulling from her work in veterinary clinics and the Bronx Zoo Exhibition Department, her art examines how people consider, use, and disregard animals. Her sculptures and paintings of animals have been exhibited around the world, most recently a solo show, “Embroidered Morphologies” at the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago, IL and in “Lagomorph: Rabbits and Hares in Contemporary Craft” at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, MA. “White Rabbit”, a solo window installation was featured at AHA Fine Art in New York City in the fall of 2023. She has received numerous fellowships including the Chulitna Lodge Creative Summer Residency at Lake Clark, Alaska, the Vermont Studio Center, Saint Ann’s Warehouse Puppet Lab, Sculpture Space, Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program and the Cultural Space Subsidy Program in Brooklyn, NY. She has received grants from the Ruth and Harold Chenven Foundation and the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation. She studied sculpture at the Repin Institute of Art in Leningrad, USSR, received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from School of Visual Arts. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
[Bio: Courtesy the Camp Gallery, Miami, Florida]