Neozoon Restores Unwanted Fur Coats To Their Former Animalistic Glory (Well, Almost)

Visually, you may recognize the artistic works of Banksy and Vinchen more than you may be familiar with their actual names, but truth be told, that's probably just fine by them.

Today's street artists seem far more concerned about highlighting cultural issues than they are with achieving artistic stardom.

In fact, they tend to favor injecting high profile public spaces such as walls, bridges, and doors with visually assaulting and oftentimes unexpected flourishes that serve to make a splashy statement about our society and its belief systems.

In the process, they leave behind thought-provoking temporary installations that can alternately beautify unconventional spaces while shedding light on the ugliness of our most mainstream societal issues.

Graffiti is among the most conventional and highly recognized forms of public guerilla art but now the category includes such diverse media forms as yarn bombing, sticker/stencil art, video installations, seed bombing and LED displays.

Add Neozoon to the increasingly long list of covert art makers who are raising eyebrows and triggering lightbulb moments with their distinctive brand of visual semi-activism.

The Berlin and Paris-based artistic collaborative of 30 and 40 somethings proudly embrace their anonymity behind masks so that their artistic creations receive the lion's share of the attention.

Referring to the common practice of introducing non-native wildlife to new areas and then calling them invasive species once they experience a successful and/or prolific population boom, Neozoon is symbolic of what man has repeatedly done to countless species throughout the ages.

Some of the best known invasive species include wild rabbits, muskrats, red fire ants, raccoons and grey squirrels - animals that we intentionally introduced to foreign soils and now commonly regard with contempt, often going as far as to exterminate them when they get in our way.

While Neozoon doesn't claim to be a collaborative of animal rights activists, they DO recognize that their various wildlife-shaped silhouettes accented with carefully glued panels of recycled fur coats stimulate natural conversations about how they were once on the backs of real live creatures.

Our society has long sanitizing the fact that we kill untold millions upon millions of animals for the sake of fashion and food -- it's a lot easier to remove the reality of their sacrifice from our minds.

By strategically selecting sites to showcase their latest works - such as placing silhouetted bears just yards away from the location of real bears that were kenneled for decades or a creating a small herd of sheep right outside one of Paris' former slaughterhouse districts - Neozoon is addressing the captor-captive relationship that we've perpetuated for eons as well as the overall lack of humanity that persists to this day.

They recently explained to Good Magazine, "At best, it raises questions, like: "Where have all those animals gone in my environment" or "oops-was this piece of shrink wrapped supermarket meat really once alive and kicking?" We take discarded fur coats and reintroduce them to the environment by returning them to their former shape, making it "live," to let people perceive [that] this used to be a living animal. Then it was just an animal skin, with a human inside, and now it has returned as an animal. Maybe it also adds something wild to our civilized urban surrounding."

For a glimpse into their artistic process, take a moment to check out the video above...and more amusingly, see what happens when a Parisian dog encounters one of Neozoon's public art installations out on the street. Clearly, the curious pup doesn't know quite what to make of their furry figures. What's your take?