Nature Made Flesh: Tamara Kostianovsky Turns Upcycled Fabrics Into Visceral Sculptures
The only softness to be found in the sculptures of Tamara Kostianovsky is the material. Using upcycled fabric mostly found from items in her own home—old T-shirts, worn-out sweaters, kitchen rags—Kostianovsky creates colorful sculptures that deal in death. She has crafted butchered animals, a gutted whale, birds hanging from meat hooks, and trees reduced to stumps. Yet beyond the harsh, almost shocking imagery lies a unique and noteworthy interpretation of humanity’s relationship to nature.
In her sculptures, Kostianovsky incorporates not only overarching themes such as climate change and violence, but also her own personal history. Born in Jerusalem, she grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina before emigrating to the United States in 2000. Coming from a military dictatorship in South America to the U.S. was a culture shock and an important influence on her future work. “One of the most surprising aspects about this experience was to be immersed in the extent of American consumer culture,” Kostianovsky explains. “I was (and still am) appalled by the number of discarded items I found on the street during my evening walks and had a hard time reconciling the enormity of that waste with the scarcity of pretty much everything that I witnessed growing up in Argentina.”
In response, Kostianovsky turned to her own possessions. “Within a few years of being in this country, I had cannibalized my wardrobe for the creation of naturalistic sculptures of butchered animals, which spoke about violence to the female body,” she says. “By transforming my clothes into sculptures of butchered cows, I was including myself in the pervasive architecture of violence that seeded both Argentina’s and Latin America’s history since colonization.”
By staging and beautifying waste, I ask the question of whether art has the power to transform garbage into something redeemable.”
Somebody asked me recently if I had washed my father’s clothes before using them in the sculptures,'” she says. “I didn’t. They still contain his cells.”
These meat sculptures, part of an early series entitled Actus Reus, which is Latin for “guilty act,” were followed by Nature Made Flesh, a project started by Kostianovsky after the death
f her father. Instead of butchered animals with leaking guts and protruding bones, she created colorful tree stumps formed mainly from her father’s old clothing. There is a surreal quality to these works. The sculptures are clear likenesses of felled trees, but they are rendered in bright colors that lend an almost whimsical feeling to the works. Here, a tree is killed, its life cut short, but the pastel palette of yellows, purples, pinks, and blues imbues it with a feeling of vitality. “The project grew out of my desire to give him some type of physical presence in the world beyond the extent of his life,” Kostianovsky says of her late father.
The title Nature Made Flesh is striking in its reference to flesh despite no obvious bodily representation. These trees are wounded—severed at the trunk—but there is no visible human corpse. As with much of her work, there are layers to uncover, and “flesh” ultimately refers back to her father. “Somebody asked me recently if I had washed my father’s clothes before using them in the sculptures,” she says. “I didn’t. They still contain his cells.” Here, loss is symbolized by the destruction of nature, underscoring the relationship between humanity and the environment. The trees, explains Kostianovsky, “anthropomorphize the landscape and highlight a common materiality among all living things.” It’s a double entendre, hinting not only at loss of a loved one, but also at the violence humans bring about against nature. Her upcycling of materials is also an act against the rampant consumerism of our culture and its environmental effects, a topic that has long been of interest.
Throughout all of Kostianovsky’s work, there is a nod to the capriciousness of life. Trees can be felled and turned to stumps; birds, cows, and pigs can be shot and hung from their feet. Yet recently she tends towards hope. Tropical Abattoir, Kostianovsky’s latest series, features her signature dangling meat carcasses, but with a surprising variation. In the cavities of these deceased animals are bright tropical scenes. The fleshy pinks and reds of the dead bodies are blended with the bright greens, blues, and yellows of a tropical jungle. Birds nest in the cavities as they would in a tree and vines climb the sides and generate flowers. Titles like “Seeded Belly,” “Heal the World” and “Cow Turns into a Landscape” underscore this idea of renewal and rehabilitation. Her works are not only recycled objects in and of themselves, but now include nods to natural regeneration. Instead of a dangling carcass that has reached the end of the line, we see a body that is home to new life, its folds hosting diverse and colorful flora and fauna. “The concept,” explains Kostianovsky, “is to transform the carcass from a site of pure carnage into a receptacle of new life that sprouts out of it—almost like a utopian environment.”
The concept… is to transform the carcass from a site of pure carnage into a receptacle of new life that sprouts out of it.”
Like most of her art, these are crafted from repurposed fabrics, a practice that has always seemed disconnected from the subject matter. Yes, she is depicting violence and death and the inseparable consequences of consumption and loss. And yet there is a vitality there. The colorful representation of death, the visible energy of Kostianovsky’s process in the stitching and patchworked fabrics, and the second act of these textiles all point to something beyond the grave. There has always been regeneration in her sculptures; in r, she pushes this further. “They ask: What would happen if the images of vegetation and bird life that we are all so drawn to were to come to life and overrun our world?” says Kostianovsky. “I think of these works in terms of a metamorphosis.”
Perhaps this is a nod back to her Nature Made Flesh series, the hollows of trees and germination of plants promising life after death. Instead of lifeless stumps, we see growing flora. Even Still Lifes, a series of dead bird sculptures hanging from meat hooks, has another layer beyond the obvious implication of death and violence. The birds are splayed like a crucified body, their wings stretched outwards like Christ hanging from the cross. He was killed knowing there would be resurrection. Perhaps for these birds there is promise of new life as well.
In either case, Kostianovsky is shifting her focus from the body to the larger whole. While she has always considered the ripple effects of consumerism, she is now representing this visually in a more prominent way. “Both series share the commonality that they have shifted the color palette from red to green,” she explains of Nature Made Flesh and Tropical Abattoir. “They are more concerned with the environment than with the singularity of the body.” As her scope increases, so does her visual language. She has managed to generate new ideas and concepts while retaining her signature style. Animals, abattoirs, trees, and flowers provide the basis for greater exploration. “By now I have developed an alphabet of tools that I can draw from,” says Kostianovsky. “I use these to create rich and complex sculptures that make visual transitions going from an arena of carnage and mayhem into a future or a speculative ecosystem where waste is incorporated back into the cycle of life.”
Above all, Kostianovsky’s body of work reminds us of humanity’s responsibility to the natural world. Through soft, discarded materials she stresses that the meat we consume was once living, the trees we fell represent greater ecological losses, and the items we consume are not created in a vacuum. And once we have devoured all available resources, what will become of the leftovers? “By staging and beautifying waste, I ask the question whether art has the power to transform the ephemeral nature of the items that consumer culture devours into something eternal and redeemable,” Kostianovsky explains. If her work is a response to this question, then the resounding answer is yes.*
This article first appeared in Hi-Fructose Issue 61, which is sold out. Like what we do? Get our latest print issue with your new Hi-Fructose subscription here!
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