ALISON RUTTAN | Individuation in Bonobo Grooming Habits | AL’S OFFICE
May 18 - June 20, 2025
Over the summer of 2004 I had an opportunity to spend time in Atlanta at the Yerkes Primate Research Station. This was later followed up with a residency in 2005 at Wild Animal Park in Escondido, California. I was exploring possibilities for future projects and was primarily interested in observing the posturing, gesturing, timing and inter-activity within chimpanzee social groups. One of the ways I initially learned to identify individual bonobos was by their facial hair grooming. The animal keepers would help me learn their names by pointing out the wide center part Akili was sporting or Loretta’s penchant for a severally plucked forehead. It was only when I got back to Chicago that I began to think that there might be more to this strange grooming practice.
I began to track information on this. In speaking with current and retired zookeepers at The San Diego Zoo many lament that at one time the bonobos all had beautiful black glossy coats. It turns out that this all changed with the arrival of Vernon, a bonobo brought over from Germany in the 1970’s. He apparently is the culprit. Vernon arrived at San Diego zoo with severally plucked legs and a bad temper. Bonobos don’t like a lot of tension and work hard at easing it, group grooming and sex are social tools they use with great frequency to ease social tensions. With Vernon around they did a lot of both. The personalized grooming styles seen in my photographs originated from this period in the zoo’s history. When the bonobos were moved to others zoo’s they brought this trend with them, hair grooming such as this is now practiced in every American Zoo that has bonobos. The “styles” you see are not random but carefully groomed for consistency. They do not change unless the individual moves to another community.
This series playfully embraces an anthropomorphizing of bonobo grooming it is also questioning assumptions on what is a legitimate measure of intelligent behavior. Traditionally tool making has been the sign of higher intelligence in species, but why not individuation and self-adornment? My project suggests that social tools, especially those that can be seen as learned behavior versus instinctive actions are in fact the beginnings of socialization and culture. Bonobo' in captivity, it appears, are expressing themselves through distinct and individual “hair styles”.
Alison Ruttan’s work has been exhibited at The Museum of Contemporary Photography”, Chicago, Sweeney Art Gallery, Riverside, California, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, Illinois, Guggenheim Gallery, Chapman University, Orange, California, Galerie Wit, Wageningen, Netherlands, Gallery TPW, Toronto, Canada, Rocket Gallery, London, England, Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, Illinois, The Drawing Center, New York City, New York, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her work has been written about in Art In America, Flash Art, Chicago Tribune, Art Papers, Chicago Magazine, New Art Examiner. Awards include The Illinois Arts Council, Jerome Foundation, Art & Technology Residency; Wexner Museum, Artists Residency; Wild Animal Park. She is a Associate Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Ruttan is a project-based artist whose work focuses on a topical investigations. The Medium is always specific to each project. Her work has commented on Human Behavior in relationship to Primates, the conflicts in the Middle East and the more recent work, looking at global warming and it’s effects on homes in coastal communities.