Axel Straschnoy (born 1978) is a visual artist and filmmaker from Buenos Aires, based in Helsinki. His work deals with the social practices surrounding objects of knowledge.
In 1895 Hermann Eberhard, a German sheep rancher, found a strange hide in a cave near his house in Last Hope Sound, in southern Chile.
In 1898, upon seeing the hide, Florentino Ameghino announced to the world that Mylodons still inhabited Patagonia, as their descendant, the Neomylodon.
The project brings together for the first time, 120 years after their discovery, all the extant Neomylodon fossil remains, in collaboration with six museums of natural history.
“The work consistently points at what is not present: the layers of the story that reveal themselves indirectly and the documentation that connects the installation to so many other narratives. The most important story might be the one about science and truth, how theories and certainties are projected like the figures you might see when watching clouds, only to be dispersed and replaced by others.”
Pontus Kyander, Axel Straschnoy: Neomylodon Listai Ameghino