Fox: Inconvenient bodies and other sense-pectives (2025)

In England, how nature is taken care of (and who takes care of it) is usually rooted in the perspective of a ‘normative’ body. Knowledge from disabled and other bodies that sense differently are overlooked whilst attitudes to conserving nature often reinforce harmful ableist logics. My encounters with the fox, an animal that is often regarded as an out-of-place, inconvenient, wayward, mangy, scrounger have offered a helpful and oblique lens to think through some of these ideas and understand how the practice of conservation could be enhanced and diversified by bodies that navigate the world differently. 

Fox: Inconvenient Bodies and other Sense-pectives is a pop-up exhibition or tactile essay that attempts to bring some of these insights to life through different methods of creatively ‘texturing’ text via sound, moving image and performative printed matters. These have been developed with input from Rangers with lived experience of disability from the London National Park City network. With very special thanks to Nat Cross-Padden and Tarek Mrad for their generosity.