The Walking Dead is a TV show on AMC based on a comic book of the same name by writer Robert Kirkman and artist Tony Moore.
Both the comic and the show are a brutal entry in the zombie horror genre. The television show immediately establishes this: in Season 1, Episode 2, a group of survivors are trapped in downtown Atlanta and looking for an escape. They quickly discern that the zombies, aka "walkers", are attracted to live human scent. In order to disguise themselves, they make the horrifying decision to paint themselves with the internal parts of a corpse to mask their scent. In doing so, they are able to move about freely amongst the walkers without detection. This experiment disgusts and appalls the group, but ultimately saves their lives and in doing so adds a gruesome new piece of lore to the zombie genre canon.
I was shocked and fascinated with this depiction: what might normal people be willing to do to survive in the face of apocalypse? How might an entire society excuse and normalize such terror to sustain themselves? I explored this concept using wet felted wool to mimic the "guts" of the episode and imagined a world where such a garment might be not just necessary for survival, but embraced.
GORY IMAGES BELOW
NSFW
Felt Bath Dye Photography and Pattern Development
Felted Wool "Guts" Garment Draping Experiment
Walker Wear Garments
