This thesis documents the work of painter, printmaker, and sculptural taxidermist Zoe Nicole Nielsen, completed while earning her Master of Fine Art in Interdisciplinary Art at Purdue University from 2023 to 2026. It traces an intimate terrain where mortality, illness, and care intersect, offering a direct confrontation with the body, human and animal, as fragile, altered, and deeply felt.

Through sculpture, taxidermy, and material experimentation, animal carcasses become tools for engaging fear and fragility, tenderness and survival, with the artist’s process documented through intimately detailed paintings and hand-drawn prints. Moving between personal narrative and critical inquiry, her work challenges the legacy of masculine domination embedded in traditional taxidermy and adopts a softer, more empathetic and sustainable approach. What emerges is a practice grounded in vulnerability and transformation, where death and the individuality of each animal is not hidden but held, examined, and memorialised.