Eat, Drink, and Be Merry: coping with zoonotic spillovers and climate injustice.

This art installation centers on then-recent outbreaks of rabies and Nipah viruses in India and Bangladesh, and reveals unexpected connections between vultures, fruit bats, and humans. Using Victorian and Dutch decorative arts from time periods in which England and the Netherlands were connected to these contemporary outbreak sites through colonization, the installation highlights the way climate injustice influences which humans and animals bear the most risk in disease spillovers. Using work by cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, the installation also considers how culture (particularly art) functions as a psychological mechanism for coping with death anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]