WHY LOOK AT ANIMALS? A Case for the Rights of Non-Human Lives

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.

The exhibition begins on the museum’s lower ground floor where the focus is on the deeply interconnected phenomena of colonialism, industrialism, and technological “progress”, which led to the first large-scale destruction of habitats as well as the violent exploitation of animals. As visitors ascend through the museum, they will encounter works that examine the present state of things: how animals exist and survive in urban environments, examples of animal activism, and new forms of animal knowledge, among other themes. Finally, on the fourth floor of the museum, the exhibition shifts in tone; here, poetics, ecofeminism, animism, play, animal creativity, and humour intersect. Animals reclaim their dignity, and we are prompted to imagine a future world in which there will be more harmonious interspecies co-existence and collaboration. 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.

Ang Siew Ching I Art Orienté Objet (Marion Laval-Jeantet & Benoît Mangin) I Sammy Baloji I Elisabetta Benassi I John Berger I Rossella Biscotti I Kasper Bosmans I Xavi Bou I Nabil Boutros I David Brooks I Cheng Xinhao I David Claerbout I Marcus Coates I Sue Coe I Simona Denicolai & Ivo Provoost I Mike Dibb & Chris Rawlence I Mark Dion I Radha D’Souza I Maarten Vanden Eynde I Jakup Ferri I Alexandros Georgiou I Igor Grubić I Gustafsson & Haapoja I Joseph Havel I Lynn Hershman Leeson I Annika Kahrs I Menelaos Karamaghiolis I Anne Marie Maes I Britta Marakatt-Labba I Nikos Markou I Angelos Merges I Wesley Meuris I Tiziana Pers I Paris Petridis I Janis Rafa I Rainio & Roberts I Marta Roberti I Mostafa Saifi Rahmouni I Lin May Saeed I Panos Sklavenitis I Sonic Space I Jonas Staal I Daniel Steegmann Mangrané I Oussama Tabti I Emma Talbot I
Nikos Tranos I Maria Tsagkari I Dimitris Tsoumplekas I Euripides Vavouris I Kostis Velonis I Driant Zeneli

Curated by Katerina Gregos