‘Why Look at Animals?’: Art exhibition explores how animals shape culture, memory and imagination
The 'Why Look at Animals' exhibition puts into question human exceptionalism, and aims to confront one of the carefully hidden and largely unspoken crimes of humanity on a mass scale: that of the daily, institutionalized, systematic violence against animals – whether directly or indirectly – a violence that denies them their basic natural rights. The exhibition highlights the fact that the myriad species who exist alongside us are not products and automata, separate from us, and subordinate to us.
ΕΣΠΑ:‘Why Look at Animals? A Case for the Rights of Non-Human Lives’ centres on animal rights and animal well-being, highlighting the urgent need to recognise and defend the lives of non-human animals in an anthropocentric world that exploits, oppresses and brutalises them. The exhibition is inspired by John Berger’s seminal essay of the same name, “Why Look at Animals?” (1980), which explores the changing relationship between humans and animals, particularly in the context of modernity. The essay reflects on how animals, once deeply integrated into human life, have become increasingly distanced, objectified and commodified.
Why Look at Animals? A Case for the Rights of Non-Human Lives aims to engender a discussion around the ethics and politics of how we treat animals. By exposing the exploitative, violent mechanisms behind systemic animal abuse, it renders what is shamefully invisible visible. The exhibition and its public programme hope to raise awareness of the conditions of non-human animal life today, from the home, the street and the factory to their threatened natural habitats.
Why Look at Animals? invites us to consider the non-human animal not as “Other”, but as a being with a “voice” and intrinsic value of its own, capable of artfulness, play, socialisation and transformation, pleasure, inventiveness, pain and grief… Advances in animal studies continue to show that more and more species of non-human animals possess intelligence and sentience; that they feel pleasure, pain, grief and fear.
The exhibition puts into question human exceptionalism, and aims to confront one of the carefully hidden and largely unspoken crimes of humanity on a mass scale: that of the daily, institutionalised, systematic violence against animals – whether directly or indirectly – a violence that denies them their basic natural rights.
Why Look at Animals? highlights the fact that the myriad species that exist alongside us are an integral part of our biosphere and ecosystems, not products and automata, separate from and subordinate to us. With this project EMΣT places ecological justice and the rights of non-human life at the heart of its programming for the months to come. Any serious engagement with climate justice and environmental protection must therefore involve animals as an integral part of the conversation. SOURCE…
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