ABSTRACT In her book Vibrant Matter, Jane Bennett asks “How would political responses to public problems change were we to take seriously the vitality of (nonhuman) bodies?” In this essay, I consider a narrower version of this question by examining Kirstin Arnett’s novel Mostly Dead Things, focusing on how depictions of art in the novel may provide pathways for addressing public problems by engaging seriously with the vitality of nonhumans. While it would be naive to suggest that art or depictions of art might be a cure-all for contemporary concerns, art is, I contend, a site where we might better connect with nonhumans and with one another to solve public problems. Leaning broadly on both relational aesthetics and object-oriented philosophies, I argue that objects and actants, including the nonhuman animals in the novel’s taxidermy shop as well as the relationships between and among characters, contribute to a participatory aesthetic of collaboration and aesthetic embodiment. I suggest, further, that such aesthetic embodiment may be an effective path toward post-anthropocentric – and perhaps even post-androcentric – futures when approached as a collaboration among existents ranging from presumably inanimate objects to humans.