Hunting and gathering is one of man’s most fundamental activities. Originally a nomadic survival strategy, as humans settled in one spot and domesticated plants and animals, hunting became a sport or amusement. The “trophies” from a successful kill were a way of impressing other people. In rarer cases, hunting was organised for scientific purposes, to preserve a particular endangered species or prevent the spread of alien invasive species. During colonialism, hunting intensified as predatory systems set up in Africa as early as the second half of the nineteenth century, tried to extract as much as possible from fertile land. Elephant hunting, for example, mainly motivated by ivory, was bringing significant revenues to the government, while other species were hunted for economic benefits, sport, scientific or prestige motivations, or spectacles in museum dioramas.

Taxonomic Trophies is a growing collection of branches from all over the world, saved and presented as endangered or extinct species. They have been “hunted” and “gathered” by Maarten Vanden Eynde during work periods, residencies, exhibitions or holidays abroad since 2005. They question value as well as status symbols of power and wealth, while confirming our insatiable desire to accumulate and collect at the expense of flora and fauna; reminding us of the continuing destruction of forests for extractivist purposes, and the simultaneous endangerment of the non-human lives whose habitats lie within them.

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Homo stupidus stupidus is a reassembled human skeleton that bears little resemblance to the human anatomy we recognise. Besides humans, the only other organisms on earth that ruin their own environment to the point of self-destruction are bacteria and viruses. A species that initiates its own decline by destroying its natural habitat, is not as wise as our taxonomic label – Homo sapiens sapiens – declares us to be. The work is a critical comment on the human arrogance that declares itself doubly wise and names after itself an entire geological era, the Anthropocene, to represent its own uniquely catastrophic influence on Earth. Homo stupidus stupidus questions the extent of human self-awareness, of self-knowledge of where we come from, how we inhabit the world, how we evolved, and where we are going. The work symbolises our inherent failure in understanding ourselves or predicating our future on the basis of our past and present, and the habitat of thousands of others.