Artist statement: My body of work explores the invisible animal that is in all of us and what is made possible by dropping the human mask that keeps us veiled.
Allowing my animal to be publicly revealed, ‘God’s anus’ is an autoethnographic work that abstracts the terror of finding blood on toilet paper and the subsequent deadening morass of chemo and radiotherapy as treatment; illustrating our fallible animal anatomy.
The title of this work references social anthropologist Ernest Becker, who once described humans as ‘gods with anuses’ – an uncomfortably poetic way to describe the paradox of humans seeking immortality, like gods, despite our fragile, temporary, and mortal reality.
We are not gods – we are flesh, bone, and gastrointestinal tract.
rorydaniel.art
