In everyday life I’m not excessively drawn to animals. That is to say, I do adore my two cats like most pet owners would and am very conscious of animal welfare (although I do eat meat even when, like most consumers, I’m not quite sure whether the animal has lived a good life and died painlessly), but if you were to ask me about my main interests in life, animals would not be among them.

Surprisingly, my subconscious doesn’t seem to agree. I have always had, and still have, animals appear in almost every dream. Rationally, I can explain this by assuming they serve as a metaphor, either one concocted by my mind (pigs flying into a bedroom wall after a rape) or related to an existing one (a frog being halved by a clothes hanger, rather than being kissed by a princess or snakes growing out of my hands after touching an apple).

However, that is not all. Apparently, I am absolutely, overwhelmingly fascinated by (certain) dead animals and (certain) dead animal art. One has to, for instance, literally drag me away from the dead, plucked – yet still with head and feet – chickens on display at Asian markets. Equally, I can stare for hours on end at Cattelan’s horse (“untitled”)  hanging from a wall, its head disappearing into it. Or at Hirst’s “This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed at home”, consisting of a pig sliced in half in two vitrines, one of which slowly slides backward and forward.

Fortunately, having worked as a full-time artist for almost a year now, I have come to more and more accept the unexplainable. So whether it’s to do with the consolation of seemingly controlling death, the aesthetics of the unattractive concept of death or whether it simply constitutes a rather morbid fascination, is now of less importance than finding my direction in art.

Some of my favourites:

“Untitled”, Maurizio Cattelan, 2007

“The last enemy” (detail), Polly Morgan, 2006

“This Little Piggy Went to Market, This Little Piggy Stayed at Home”, Damien Hirst, 1996

“Lenore”, Julia deVille, 2010