THE BLACK MARKET WORK OF AN OUTLAW TAXIDERMIST
I’ll be the first to admit that I find a lot of Frankenstein taxidermy pretty corny, but the work of Enrique Gomez De Molina is so precise and seamless, his cut-and-paste beasts achieve a kind of uncanny beauty. Unfortunately, his materials weren’t exactly acquired above-board. In 2012 he was sentenced to 20 months in federal pen for trafficking in endangered and protected wildlife—or at least their parts.
The prosecutor points out that De Molina has been purchasing parts of endangered and protected animals for years, including “cobra, a pangolin, hornbills, and the skulls of babirusa and orangutans.” (If you’re naive enough to ask why it’s illegal to import an endangered animal that’s already dead, I’ll leave you to your thoughts.) However, despite making up to $80,000 per piece, De Molina claims he’s in it for the animals, “to bring awareness to the danger faced by a multitude of species: nuclear and chemical waste, overdevelopment, and destruction of rainforests.”
