The Animal Within

Visual art and its fascination with animals (in the form of pets, zoo animals, farm animals, stuffed animals, along with projections of wildness) prepare the ground to reflect on the nature of sex, hunger, and affection, as well as on family and gender relations, socialization and domestication, and, not least, on the enduring impact of colonial history. Put another way: The Animal Within uses the popular appeal of animals to negotiate structures of violence and domination. Who eats whom? Who skins whom? Who leads whom on a leash? Who gives whom a name? But also: Why are children's playpens populated by so many cute stuffed animals? What purpose do aquariums, birdcages, and exotic trinkets serve in the bourgeois living room? And what makes animal skins such a popular fetish in expressions of sexuality and fashion? The exhibition is thus less about animals than about bodies, moving or still, reclining or standing, crouching or crawling. The animal as a motif serves as a starting point for arriving at a materialist understanding of art and life, and not in a figurative sense-it is astonishing how prominently bones, skins, hides, and feathers feature in the visual arts of the last hundred years.