PIG 05049 : Christien Meindertsma
I've stumbled across a startling art exhibition. This project, PIG 05049, takes one pig and illustrates in a very sterile and frank kind of manner where every bit and piece of the corpse goes. Here's the description from the artist's website
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I kindly, completely disagree. I am a photographer and my current project for my senior exhibition and hopefully a gallery show in the future is photographing wild animals that die natural deaths. I find their decomposition and the way the rest of nature uses their bodies to be beautiful and thought-provoking. My series also focuses on the way society tends to hate and shun [wild, undomesticated] dead animals, treating them as useless trash, things to be avoided. I try to portray these deceased creatures as beautiful if not fascinating. I photograph them and treat their bodies respectfully when doing so. The photographs are not meant to shock or offend. My goal is to make people LOOK at these beautiful, dead animals and realize they are vital to the survival of their ecosystems.
Of course you can disagree with that. But you cannot, in the art world, go out and say "Fact: dead animals are not art."
Nothing "consents" to be art. Not people, not animals (dead or alive), not a building or a street scene. Just because you dislike something (i.e., dead animals in art) does not automatically make it "not art." I also believe there is a HUGE difference between photographing a dead animal and, say, killing a cat and making it into a purse (yes, there is an artist who does this, I don't remember her name). One of these animals died of natural causes (predation, starvation, etc.) and the other was murdered. I may not agree with it, however, my opinion does not change the fact of whether or not said cat-purse-maker is an artist or not.
In re: to this exhibition: it's fascinating.
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To be specific, I'm referring to artists who incorporate the physical body of an animal, as opposed to representing it. It may be art, sure, but it's a cheap way to get a reaction and I don't see the ends justifying the means.
The idea or representation of a dead animal, which you sound like you capture quite viscerally, is something I wholly support. I've seen it done quite elegantly, and your stuff sounds like no exception. Have you a website? I'd love to see it.
re. the idea of "nothing consents to be art" - I feel the need to differentiate, here. It's one thing to be caught unawares in a street scene, but it's entirely another to lose your life for someone elses' project.
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I'd post the URL to my blog but I think a fair share of folks here would be very offended and might attack me. D: Send me a note and I'll give you the address?
(And sorry if my first comment was a little confrontational. I'm getting quite emotional about my current project...)
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I had a fair few debates of this kind in art school (I actually have the same alma mater as Jesse Power.. blegh). There was a time in first year when you couldn't get through a class of any kind without running up against the "What is art?" debate (or the similar but equally exasperating "What is Beauty" debate). I'm not a hard-liner by any means - I've been much more permissive than a lot of my peers, for example, in allowing room for community art and activist art in the sphere simply because they serve very important purposes, even if they look ridiculous or are kind of cheesy. I can totally understand the line of thinking that equates any thought-provoking project with art for a lot of reasons, but I just can't bring myself to let exploitation off the hook. IMHO - it can be thought provoking, elegant, well-exhibited, expertly-debated, painstakingly crafted art, but if it's exploitative, it's just exploitation to me. Thought provoking, elegant, well-exhibited, expertly-debated, painstakingly crafted exploitation. I don't see anything wrong with stripping something of the title, and it certainly doesn't make that something less thought-provoking, but.. I think I'm rambling! Y'know what I mean?
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Nathalia Edenmont?
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