What goes in must ultimately find its way out, and as you can imagine with a typical Elephant -- which spends roughly 16 hours each day consuming 300–600 pounds of leafy greens, fruit, bark, grasses, shrubs and herbs -- that amounts to a whole lotta dung. Considered to be non-ruminant unglulates, the digestive system of the highly intelligent mammals is only capable of thoroughly processing up to 40% of the vegetation that they eat, resulting in a fibrous by-product that has proven to be especially recycle-worthy. Countless companies have caught onto the eco-friendly aspect of transforming elephant waste into durable and thankfully scent-free paper products such as stationery, note books and cards, but there are some who have extended the boundaries of their imagination to come up with some very unusual and especially memorable applications.
British painter Chris Ofili’s series of elephant feces art works, in which he's used the unexpected medium somewhat like molding clay and occasionally plaster, imbue his canvases with a textural interest that certainly makes onlookers sit up and take notice. His Nigerian descent likely comes into play with his choice of artistic material, but once you get past the normal revulsion that kicks in, it’s not such a strange thing in light of the fact that it’s entirely organic compared to many of the other art supplies that contemporary artists use today. Nevertheless, he’s become emblematic of the notion of $#*t hitting the fan because there are certain people who really don’t like the idea of art dancing with excrement, even if it's a clever way to repurpose something that would otherwise attract the attention of flies and dung beetles.
Of course, one has to wonder if the Turner Prize-winning artist intentionally tried to stir up controversy with his decision to incorporate not just animal excrement but also nude collage images in his 1996 mixed media effort, “The Holy Virgin Mary” or if he’s really just a huge fan of our largest member of the wild kingdom. When the aforementioned work was slated to appear in a Brooklyn Museum exhibit, former New York City mayor Rudy Guiliani attempted (quite unsuccessfully, I might add) to block it from public view, inadvertently helping the artist to achieve an even greater presence in the artistic community. Ofili’s donation of $105,000 to the Zoological Society of London’s Whipsnade Wild Animal Park to create an outdoor elephant play area might very well indicate where his allegiances are rooted (along with the fact that he has frequently smuggled dung from Africa and has also augmented his supplies with London Zoo donations). Perhaps there’s also a defiant ember smoldering within the artist’s soul, as well.
Ofili has made such a far reaching impression that Britain’s Tate Gallery asked six of today’s most promising artists to create an original work that pays homage to his bold artistic style. The final product created by one designer is so stellar in vision and outrageous in scope that I don’t believe anyone else could have come even remotely close to capturing the essence that is so fittingly Ofili. Behold INSA’s 10 inch elephant dung heels, constructed with excrement from the identical family that generated Ofili’s 90’s based dung supplies – now THAT’s going above and beyond the call of duty for the sake of artistic authenticity! With a background of street graffiti behind him, INSA succeeded in creating a bold, ostentatious and highly ornate fashion statement with his earthy, sky-high, resin-coated elephant excrement shoes. Do you think that Jimmy Choo needs to watch his back or what?!?!
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