Andra Norris Gallery proudly presents a Jane Kim solo exhibition: Human nature: desire, exploring the ways desire manifests itself in our actions and artifacts.

Human nature: desire turns a lens on the lengths we go to fulfill our most frivolous appetites and foundational needs. The clothes we wear, the food we eat, the homes we build and decorate, and the pets we breed are all symbols of perceived status that belie greater contradiction. For the artist, this body of work represents a personal confrontation of how Victorian and Industrial era value structures have shaped her own desires.

The color of envy, the color of money, the color of nature, the color of youth: no color better reveals unsettling truths about human desire than the color green.

Historically, the secret to making superior green pigments has frustrated and eluded us. Most natural green pigments are unstable, requiring the color to be produced using a mixture of pigments, usually blue and yellow. Of all the shades of green in Envy, only one was created with green pigment. In the early 19th century, paint manufacturers developed Paris Green, an emerald pigment made with copper and arsenic. Its utility as a paint was exceeded only by its utility as rat poison. The toxicity of the pigment didn’t deter people from bringing it into their homes in the form of wallpaper, where the arsenic then off-gassed in a garlicky odor: an object of beauty that poisoned the covetous. The denial of fact and reality in service of desire is a struggle as old as humanity itself.

Giant monkey frogs tell a more contemporary story. Kambo is a compound derived from poisonous secretions of the frog used in ceremony by indigenous peoples of the Amazon. More recently, the practice has been promoted in commercial “wellness” circles as a detoxifying agent when, in fact, the poison can be fatal to humans and has no scientifically proven medical benefits. The frogs hang from the branches of the suicide tree, which produces deadly seeds that, in Madagascar, were historically force fed to accused witches. Like America’s Salem witch trials, only the innocent survived.

At the center sits a 3D color model inspired by ornithologist Robert Ridgeway who, at the turn of the 20th century, attempted to standardize the colors used to describe birds. The outer shell of the color model is decorated with strips of wallpaper that tell varied story of the color green: flypaper, rats, and garlic as a nod to arsenic’s poisonous properties; an amorous interlude that references the poison’s mythical status as an aphrodisiac; and patterns of emerald, malachite, and chlorophyll. The painting’s background is a pattern pulled from the work of William Morris, the era’s leading wallpaper designer. Foil made of copper—an element used to create green pigment—lines the edges of the color model.

The heart of the painting belongs to the Livingstone’s Turaco, one of the few birds that produces green pigment, turacoverdin, by synthesizing copper in its diet.

When competing desires collide, which one wins?

At the turn of the 20th century, North American bird populations were plummeting, hitting a nadir with the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon and the Carolina Parakeet. One of the leading factors? Hats. High fashion millinery grew so obsessed with feathers that many of the birds we commonly see and love today nearly went the way of the pigeon and parakeet. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act in 1918 made the hunting of migratory birds illegal and is among the oldest and most successful laws in the service of wildlife protection. Our desire for a bird-filled sky trumped our desire to wear them on our heads. Only certain feathers were valued for millinery and birds were killed by the thousand for just a few feathers each. In 1918, a flock of varied herons, joined by Carolina Parakeets inspired by Audubon, sits perched atop a woman’s head in full splendor: gaudy over-indulgence cast against an optimistic sunrise glow. The woman’s gaze is fixed forward, her face blurred in motion. Progress is never guaranteed. At a time rights we’ve fought long and hard to establish are under attack, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act remains a beacon of hope.

Few things reflect human desire more than domesticated animals. We desire them for their labor, their resources, their companionship. In the pug, we’ve bred a dog that embodies our a desire for wealth, power, and status.

The origins of domesticated dogs are not entirely clear. A 2021 study suggests that dogs may have sprung from a now-extinct species of Japanese wolf. Pugs dates back to 5th century BCE China, where they were bred for their small stature, friendly disposition, and service as lapdogs for the royal and wealthy. To this day, the pug’s squat size and short-muzzled face are considered desirable traits despite the physiological challenges they create for the dog. Like the practice of binding women’s feet, the pug’s physical limitations only increased its value as an ornament and object of desire. The breed became coveted in European courts in the 16th century and remain popular worldwide today.

In Wolf, interrupted a pug sits atop a royal perch imprinted with the Mandarin character for “prince,” a symbol that’s said to resemble the wrinkle patterns on a pug’s brow. Surrounding the canine royalty stands a collection of blue and white chinoiserie—another object of ornament and desire—and a Japanese-style urn behind it, a nod to the domesticated dog’s potential origins. With its eyes wide and head on tilt, the pug offers a curious, quizzical gaze, confused by how it arrived here in the first place. The painting hangs on a diagonal and occupies a space that is 35.5 tall x 35.5 inches wide. Professionally framed.

In developing 1918, the artist wondered: what would a hat constructed only of full-bodied birds look like? Initially, she envisioned headwear made from specimens represented in 1918, a desire she soon realized was not possible due, of course, to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Instead, Kim used legally-collected European Starling specimens, an invasive species introduced in the late 19th century and considered an agricultural pest. Famous for their murmurations, in which thousands of starlings can blacken the sky, each individual synchronizes its movements with its seven closest neighbors.

Twenty-one (a number divisible by seven) full-bodied specimens cluster into a cloche, a style of hat popular in the early 20th century. In collaboration with taxidermist Allis Markham, the starlings are positioned in natural postures in an arrangement that is both stunning and unsettling, seductive and macabre. In our attraction to such fashion, we rarely consider the value of creatures like starlings in nature, only their value as commodities. For the artist, Guilty pleasure represents forbidden fruit; a fashion statement she’s denied herself—and the world—by putting it behind glass.