Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Failing to close an exhibition

To counter act the previous article that I talked about, I read a newspaper article, Animal rights activists fail to close Italian art exhibition by Garrett Harris, that talked about the same artist: Adel Abdessemed. In 2009 the artist had a controversial exhibition at Turin-based gallery. Included in the exhibition were images of animals being slaughtered. Some of the images included where the same images that were closed in the San Francisco exhibition the previous year. These images are included in the work Don't Trust Me (2008). The exhibition also included more films shot in Mexico that showcased roosters and dogs fighting in an area that the artist has put them in.

The Italian rights group reported concerns about the works involved with the exhibition to Turin's councillor, Domenico Magaone. The outcome was that works didn't have anything incriminating or illegal about them. So, the show went on as planned.

There is also mention about the exhibition at SAIC and what happened there.

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My thoughts:
It appears to me that the Italian animal rights group approached this exhibition in a different way than In Defense of Animals did with the SAIC exhibition. There was no mention of any direct threats to the artists or anyone else involved at the Turin exhibition. Is this because there wasn't a more massive public outpour of the exhibition? I wonder how many people actually reported concerns? Was it just a handful of people or thousands of people like with the In Defense of Animal group? I think the more people that are reporting a negative aspect of the works would have a great impact of shutting down the exhibition.

Is a more forceful direct and even threatening approach the only one that is going to work? I found these two newspaper articles fascinating because it has two different groups trying to shut down the same artist's exhibition. I do not think that animals rights groups should be going ground treating people. That is just not right. The question then remains who can animal rights groups approach exhibitions and artists who are harming animals in order to get their message across to the public?

I really have no desire to research more about the artist Abdessened. The work is just something I don't want to deal with; however, these newspaper articles about his work allows me to see evidence of animals advocacy groups trying to close down exhibitions.

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