As outlined on my ‘Artist’s statement’, the central Research question for current work started as:
What can I Learn about how artistic interventions can interrupt the iconography of oppression, objectification, invisibility (as subjects) and discourses of violence, in our society; specifically toward ‘other’ animals?
General questions for all my work:
– How can I synthesise social critique with emotional experience?
– How can I synthesise a focus on subject and on process/materiality?
– How can drawing be used as a research method that contributes to new knowledge (rather than draws on knowledge already in the public sphere) (Simoniti, 2021)
– How can I bring my drawing into the public sphere and move toward a dialogic practice (Kester, ‘Conversation Pieces’ p. 23: dialogic art necessitates a shift in our understanding of what art is – away from the visual and sensory (which are individual experiences) and toward discursive exchange and negotiation).
Rationale
The rationale for this focus on violence to other animals starts from the fact that daily millions of farmed animals are slaughtered. In 2020 (the last year for which I could get accurate figures) 73,162,794,213 cows, chicken, sheep and pigs were murdered. Almost three-quarters of those killed were in the Americas and China. The killing of other animals has increased on every continent except Europe, where it has decreased.
(https://faunalytics.org/global-animal-slaughter-statis)tics-charts-2022-update/)
I start with the belief that murder of anyone is wrong and that this most fundamental violence is normalised in society. I believe it leads to disocciation from pain and suffering of others.
As well as this, killing, torture, mutilation and cruelty are omnipresent in the farming industry. For example, cows are raped annually and their offspring stolen immediately after birth. Their milk production is kept at a painful and exhausting level. Male chickens are ground alive in the egg industry. Lambs are taken away from their mothers at six months to be slaughtered.
In contemporary art the products of murdered animals are widely used, from gelatin used for sizing paper, to dye’s and pigments used in paint and ink. The hair from pigs and squirrels is used to make paint brushes. Additionally dead animals have become ‘popular’ as taxidermied ‘objects’ for human spectacle. My first concern is whether mediums I use are cruelty-free, followed by the question of whether they are plastic-free.
Application
I hope my work contributes in a small way to an ethic of non-violence.
While the ethics of non violence to other beings is the priority, there is substantial evidence of the link between violence toward other animals and violence between humans (see, for example, the National Link Coalition which educates on the link between animal abuse and human violence).
In addition I understand that a plant based diet contributes greatly to a reduction in climate warming , as well as to reduction in deforestation, desertification and other species extinction (see, for example the publication by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, Livestock’s Long Shadow: environmental issues and options, 2006 nb. terms such as ‘Livestock’ should be critiqued).
There is also evidence that a diet based on meat and dairy products is implicated in many human illnesses/diseases (see the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, NHANES).
Contexts
It seems that worldwide we have become more concerned about the impacts of human infrastructure projects on the environment, and non-human life. The Living Planet Report of 2022 reveals a 69% decline in species populations since 1970 – much of it from human causes.
In contemporary art, as I imagine in almost every other discipline, the focus on environmental damage and ecocide has been foregrounded – as I write (August 2023) only last week I visited an exhibition called ‘Dear Earth’ at the Hayward Gallery. Earlier this year I visited an art exhibiton called ‘Science Frictions’ in Bilbao, which was inspired by the work of the biologist Lyn Margulis and biologist/philosopher, Donna Haraway. Online there are numerous examples of artists taking this focus, often with a cross-disciplinary approach, for example, Feral Atlas, set up by the anthropologist, Anna Tsing.
These are wonderful and important projects. However I approach them with the question: ‘Does the emphasis on non-human life include impacts on other animals, and particularly farmed animals on whom the impacts are arguably the most devastating?’
Surprisingly, non-human animals are often absent in the works I see. For example, in ‘Dear Earth’ there were only two references to other animals: one a reference to other animals in a painting of the jungle by Daiara Tukano, the other the bird’s eye sculpture by Jenny Kendler. Science Frictions is the only exhibition in which I have seen reference to ‘farmed animals’. This raises the next question, ‘Is our concern for the environment still an anthropocentric one? ie is our concern mostly for its effects on humans and our enjoyment of the landscape?’
There seems to be a gap in contemporary art regarding the relationship of animal justice to other justice issues and ecocide.
In fact, art focused on ecocide seems slow to recognise that other animals are a hugely important part of the environment, and that we co-habit Earth with them. Instead environmental art, and/or ecojustice art (which are not necessarily the same thing) tends to focus on land, sea, plant, fungi and insect issues.
Strangely, there appears to be an odd silence on the impacts of human infrastructure projects on other animal life, particularly farmed animals. Nor does it appear to be recognised that the issues underpinning violence to other animals are intersectional – that is – they are the same issues confronting all injustices including ecocide, and they stem from anthropocentric, capitalist and colonising views, beliefs and behaviours. These are explored further in the theoretical part of this work.
Please see examples of works in both fiction and visual art that influenced me from the start, or that I came across in my research to find artists working on issues relating to the non-human-human animal relationship in both unit one and two of this blog.
Bibliography
Arribas-Ayllon, Michael; Walkerdine, Valerie (2008). Foucauldian Discourse Analysis. London: Sage.
Berger, J. (1977, 2009) Why Look At Animals? London: Penguin.
Best, S., Kahn, R., Nocella II, A and Gigliotti, C. (2007). Introducing Critical Animal Studies. in Critical Animal Studies, Vol 5, 1.
Braidotti, R. (2022) Posthuman Feminism. Cambridge: Polity Books.
Canavan, G and Robinson, S. (2014). Green Planets: Ecology and Science Fiction. Wesleyan University Press.
Cronin, J. Keri and Kramer, Lisa, A. (2018). Challenging the Iconography of Oppression in Marketing: Confronting Speciesism Through Art and Visual Culture, in Journal of Animal Ethics, Vol. 8, No. 1 (spring) pp. 80-92.
Demos, T. J. (2013). Contemporary Art and The Politics of Ecology. Third Text. Vol 27. No 1. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09528822.2013.753187 (Accessed 9 August 2022).
Demos, T. J. (2016). Decolonizing Nature: Contemporary Art and The Politics of Ecology. Berlin: Sternberg Press.
Demos, T. J. (2017) Against The Anthropocene: Visual Culture and Environment Today. Berlin: Sternberg Press
Elia, (2019). https://contemporary.burlington.org.uk/journal/journal/between-species-animal-human-collaboration-in-contemporary-art
Haraway, D. (1988). Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. in Feminist Studies, Vol 14, 3. pages 575-599.
Haapoja, T. Interview on ethical considerations in her art. https://www.collectorsagenda.com/en/in-the-studio/terike-haapoja
Kester, G. H. (2010). Conversatie Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art. USA: University of California Press.
Olufemi, L. (2021). Experiments in Imagining Otherwise, London : Hajar Press.
Shulz, K. A. (2017) Decolonizing the Anthropocene: The Mytho-Politics of Human Mastery. Published by E-International Relations. Available for download here: https://www.e-ir.info/2017/07/01/decolonising-the-anthropocene-the-mytho-politics-of-human-mastery/
Simoniti, V. (2021) Art As Political discourse. British Journal of Aesthetics. Vol 61. Issue 4, October. pp 559-574.
Stone, A. (2013). Alienation from Nature and Early German Romanticism. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice. Vol 16. No. 4.
Trinh T Minha-ha (2016). The image and the void. Journal of Visual Culture. Vol 15. Issue 1.
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, Livestock’s Long Shadow: environmental issues and options, 2006.
Vishmidt, M. (2922) Speculation. Documents in Contemporary Art. Whitechapel Art Gallery. London: The MIT Press.
Weheliye, A. (2014) Habeas Viscus. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
nationallinkcoalition.org (the links between violence toward other animals and inter-human violence)
Report on the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/mar/04/animal-protein-diets-smoking-meat-eggs-dairy
Drawing As Critique 