Marisa Pushee is an Oakland-based artist, activist and writer. A native of Massachusetts, Marisa received her BA from Hampshire College and her MA from California College of the Arts in Visual and Critical Studies. Her drawings and prints stem from the relationships she has built with captive-bred wolves rescued from the exotic pet trade. Marisa currently works as a caregiver and researcher with the gorilla, Koko, at The Gorilla Foundation. Her interests lie in animal liberation, prison abolition and prisoner support, interspecies communication, art education, and implementing an intersectional approach to social justice.
Artist Statement for the series Canis Lupus:
"animals are always observed. The fact that they can observe us has lost all significance… That look between animal and man…has been extinguished.” --John Berger
Though a popular trope, representations of wolves have been limited. Often relegated to the locked-in stare of a lone wolf on an over-sized T-shirt or the dead stare of a taxidermy specimen, their ability not only to react, but also to respond, engage, interact, and challenge our assumptions has been denied. My work comments on this denial and on the nonhuman animal’s position as the passive other; as such my drawings lack the ability to return or rather respond to the gaze.
Each of my subjects has a name, a history, and a past in the exotic pet trade. Often coming from backgrounds of abuse and neglect, they currently live at a sanctuary for captive-bred wolves and wolf dogs. Found to be unsuitable pets yet unable to adapt to a life free of human intervention, they become displaced, not domestic and yet not quite wild.
For more information about the wolves and wolf dogs featured in this series, please visit: