Jade To – r4bbit.teeth

Your project reflects on mortality through animal symbolism — the lamb, deer, and rabbit. How did you choose these particular creatures to represent different stages of awareness about death?

During the conception of r4bbit.teeth, I knew I wanted to use symbols of innocence, purity, and naivety, and to put it plainly, cute things to both represent and contrast the darker themes of my work. I have always been drawn to the intersection of creepy and cute. For the narrative of the project, exploring the stages of acknowledging and accepting mortality and death, I wanted to create characters that embody each step of the process.

I came upon the rabbit, deer, and lamb as my main subjects both intentionally and by chance, as in my research, these three specifically stood out to me as the perfect vessels to embody the balance of sweet and unsettling that I am striving for. Each animal respectively are cultural and folkloric symbols of gentleness, innocence, and can have ties to the spiritual and supernatural. These three creatures also play a role in some brutal and gruesome human/animal dynamics, with rabbits and deer being hunted for sport, as well as being common victims of roadkill, and lambs being historically a sacrificial offering.

With this all in mind, I found the three, the lamb, deer, and rabbit, becoming the characters in my story… of one being blissfully unaware to the realities of death, to later attempting ignorance and compartmentalization, to then dread its existence and fixate on the horrors of it, spirally over its inevitability.

The lamb, deer, and rabbit all embody innocence in different ways. How does each one evolve conceptually across your body of work?

In r4bbit.teeth, each animal is a representation of different stages in the process of coming to terms with our own death, and death as a concept.

The rabbit is the tainted innocence, the loss of naivety, fixated on the horrors of our own ephemerality, representing the spirally obsession in the temporary that fear of death can spawn.

The deer is the dread of trying to accept, or even just acknowledge the reality of our delicate bodies and fragile existence, embodying the difficulty in trying not to compartmentalize the idea that everyone around us can be victim to circumstances beyond our control.

The lamb is purity, childlike innocence, not yet exposed to the truth of our own mortality, with the wool over their eyes, symbolizing how we like to try to shield the young from the darker, more macabre facts of life.

I chose rabbits to be the most morbid, since in my research, I found that they are subject to really strangely grotesque phenomena biologically. Rabbits became the main muse for my work in quite an interesting way. They stood out to me as a strong source of inspiration when I came across this image of a neglected rabbit with these overgrown and gnarled teeth. Something about cute, innocent creatures being marred and deformed is strikingly confronting, and I found that to be imagery I want to convey my ideas and story. This is where the name, r4bbit.teeth, is derived from, and this phenomenon so perfectly encapsulated the tone and essence of what I wanted to create.

The deer are representative of a middle ground between acknowledgement and hyperfixation. Deer are beautiful and graceful, with big doe eyes and a gentle, but skittish nature. I chose them to be an in-between, due to the contrast of their imposing, sometimes intimidating form being revered throughout history and culture, and the cruel fates they are subject to due to human circumstance, like roadkill and sport hunting. I find a lot of inspiration from biology as well, looking into the symptoms of prion disease, and the horror-movie-esque imagery of the antler velvet shedding.

The lamb are the most detached from the darker, more visceral motifs and themes, since I chose them to be a symbol of being less aware of the horrors. This is based on the idiom, “pulling the wool over your eyes”, even though the original meaning is to deceive. In this case, keeping one blissfully ignorant can be deception in itself, though no fault of the one being kept in the dark. The concept of the sacrificial lamb, spilling the blood of a creature so young, pure, and defenseless, goes against the inherently wrong feeling of bringing harm against the innocent, while showing what we are willing to slaughter for the common good. The lamb does not know why it must be sacrificed.

Jade To | Desecrate To Sustain | 2024

The series balances beauty and grotesque imagery — how do you find equilibrium between these two extremes?

While I like to delve into macabre narratives, I do not always wish to use in-your-face gore. As of right now, I have been trying to keep the visuals more subdued and implied to go along with the idea of the cognitive dissonance between the two extremes, beauty and the grotesque, and how they can both clash and oddly compliment each other.

I like to have the imagery be more understated, though I am not opposed to exploring more graphic and violent depictions. I am a big fan of horror movies/novels/manga, and I am not entirely opposed to one day leaning into jarring, grotesque visuals. For now, I like drawing a fine line between dark and disgusting, and I try not to lean into the extremes, since I still try to maintain the balance of cute and eerie.

You mention your first experience with death being a dead deer on the side of the road. How did that moment influence the tone and emotion of your later work?

I think like anything that sticks to the back of your mind, it’s an image that keeps coming back to me. Unfortunately, something like the first glimpse of how temporary life is and how gory death can be is not something that you can pretend doesn’t exist or pertain to you. No matter how much you try to learn about it in hopes of understanding it objectively, or how much you can try to bury it deep down, it doesn’t make it less scary. I think, broadly speaking, all life fears death.

A moment like that, driving past a dead deer on the side of the road, whisking past it so quickly that the scene is just a passing blur… It’s probably a scenario in which the parents are hoping that the children’s attention spans are short enough to take the little white lie of “oh honey, the deer is just sleeping,” and move on to the next topic. Though, something like that really sticks with you, as it is something so visceral and confronting. At any age, it can be hard to dwell on the unknown and the inevitable.

In developing a concept for my creative work, I wanted to create selfishly and personally, as if the only target audience is myself. Thinking on what topics and visuals I wanted to explore, this memory of this specific experience came to the forefront. It was probably the catalyst for my morbid curiosity, as well as my interest in the horror genre and anatomy/physiology. I knew I wanted to use it as the backbone for my work, since it seemed to greatly influence me as a person, with my fixation on existence and its horrors.

Jade To | The Greed Of NaïVety (For They Do Not Know Yet Of Their Wrongdoings) | 2024

There’s a striking contrast between softness (animals, flowers, lace) and violence (flesh, decay) in your paintings. What do you hope viewers feel when confronted with that juxtaposition?

For r4bbit.teeth, I want to create an image that is conflicting, that at first can appear sweet and unassuming, but a closer look can reveal the brutality. This contrast stems from r4bbit.teeth’s beginning, as the project started as my thesis for my BFA in Fashion Design as a knitwear collection. An initial series of illustrations I did, consisting of the rabbit, lamb, and deer, informed the apparel and fiber arts in my thesis, as well as my current paintings.

A consistent part of my work has been playing with the combination of unsettling imagery countered with inviting, familiar elements which create this sort of dissonance and confusion within the viewer. With cute, yet visually uncomfortable imagery balanced with a soft, comforting feel, the pieces can provide physical comfort in efforts to counteract the disturbing narrative.

The red spider lilies appear throughout your works — can you talk about their symbolism and how they function as a visual motif?

The red spider lily is one of my favorite flowers due to their meaning. As a character in the world of r4bbit.teeth, it is an omen of having to finally confront the end and full acceptance of our fates, choosing to live alongside the finality of death, instead of in spite of it.

In Japanese flower language, hanakotoba (花言葉), the red spider lily symbolizes death, final goodbyes, and abandonment. It is a flower that is, rather poetically, often found on roadsides and in cemeteries. The red spider lily is also quite significant in Buddhism in Japan, as they are believed to be the flower that grows in Hell that guides the dead in the afterlife to their next reincarnation. They are used frequently in media, such as anime and video games, in moments preceding a significant character death.

As a visual motif, their ominous beauty is so haunting that even if you do not know the meaning it can hold, the viewer can almost sense it as an omen. Its otherworldly appearance in tandem with its implications compliment my narrative quite well, so I use it as a concluding stage in the process of acknowledgment and acceptance of death.

Jade To | To Accept Is To Succomb | 2024

How has living and working in New York City influenced your artistic philosophy and visual style?

New York City is an amazing place, and I cannot imagine living anywhere else. The diversity in the people, the neighborhoods, and the freedom you have to be yourself is what makes most people fall in love with it. Although, in a city with a saturation of creatives, a lot of artists can lose their authenticity in exchange for visibility and acclaim. It can be hard to decipher what are trends and shock value, as opposed to what feels honest and not performative. There can be such a strong yearning to be original and a pioneer, which can sometimes make creating and coming up with new ideas feel like a burden.

For my artistic philosophy and visual style, I believe the influence it has on me is that it pushes me to create more selfishly. I think of myself as my target audience and just hope that others can appreciate my vision as well, instead of trying to make what a massive demographic would like.

I also look at what’s around me for inspiration, from apple cores discarded on a sidewalk, to an abandoned stuffed animal forgotten on the subway tracks, to a crude graffiti depiction of a rabbit. I think with a place so rich in art and creativity, looking beyond what other people are doing, and focusing on the beauty in the mundane can be the most inspiring.