Christie Lau’s newest series Endlings, explores the notion of de-extinction, the act of reviving extinct species, and the role that we as humans have played in their rise and fall.

In March 2013, Revive and Restore, an organization dedicated to coordinating genomic technology for conservation, hosted a conference with National Geographic and TedX. Biologists, ethicists and conservationists discussed the moral and logistical reasons for bringing back extinct species by using DNA information from museum specimens. This inspired a range of visceral reactions, such as adult horror and childlike wonder. Animal resurrection is a unique and contemporary question we are facing; humans, the most intelligent species on earth, have the hard-earned power to make right what we have done wrong.

The way humans interpret animals is by anthropomorphizing them and using them as creatures of information rather than communication. Human activity has caused much animal extinction, and what we have left of these lost species are skeletons and broken up DNA.

In this series Lau stays true to her detailed and whimsical style by adhering crystals on mirrors and painting onto them portraits of endlings (the last living animal of a species). By painting the endlings in greyscale Lau portrays the gradual loss of the animals’ ephemeral essence and way of life, when animals are exposed to humans, similar to the way the colourless crystal structure is a metaphor for emptied skeletal remains. Both exist as basic blueprints for form.