Made from local biodegradable materials, the cute giant sculpture blends in with its surroundings. It was built back in 2004 to show the size of the problem that the animals are said to cause to waterworks and dykes in the geographically low-lying country. Hofman‘s Musk Rat was mainly built with local sustainable materials – he started with a wooden structure covered with local thatch.
Thatch is a low-cost material widely used for building roofs and made from various typed of dry vegetation like straw, water reed, or sedge. The rat’s wooden structure was prefabricated in a workshop and taken on-site to be covered and sculpted with the dry plants. Big as the problem and cute as the real thing, Florentijn Hofman’s Muskrat has probably already melted back into the Dutch environment.
Photos © Florentijn Hofman