A Chinese artist who grafted the head of a human fetus onto the body of a bird has defended his work as art after a Swiss museum withdrew the piece from an exhibit. "It's precisely because I respect all life that I did this," artist Xiao Yu said Tuesday. He said the bird and fetus "died because there was something wrong with them. ... I thought putting them together like this was a way for them to have another life."
The controversial artwork named "Ruan," featuring a fetus head grafted onto the body of a bird, was created by Chinese avant-garde artist Xiao Yu. Swiss museum visitor Adrien de Riedmatten, 29, filed a complaint on Monday with the district attorney of Bern, Switzerland, calling for an investigation into the piece, which was on display at the Bern Art Museum. Xiao said he bought the head in 1999 for a few dollars from a man who was cleaning out a scientific exhibition hall. The glass bottle in which it came had a handwritten sticker identifying it as a female specimen from the 1960s. According to Xiao, it had no name or cause of death. He said he thought it was a miscarriage and not an aborted fetus, because it predated China's "one child" birth control policy -- launched in the late 1970s to limit most urban couples to one child in order to slow the growth of its population, which officially hit 1.3 billion this year. Rural couples and some in cities are allowed two children. The name of the piece, "Ruan," is a word Xiao invented that combines the Chinese characters for different kinds of animals. Xiao said he added the eyes of a rabbit to the head. Xiao is known for shocking material. He once paid an assistant $1,200 to sew pairs of living lab mice together at the hip and displayed them in glass bowls.
9 comments:
What an amazing piece! Good work smoky, keep us in the know. I've been thinking fo doing a drawing of a sphinx, with andrew's head, and the body of a lion, but don't worry, no sculpture/taxidermy for this artist.(this is where someone interjects about thorney's rabbit's)
If the detractors of this art are worried about the boundaries between art and life, maybe they should check out Monsanto's new 'pigless-pork'(meat growing from petree dishes!). Do pork chops have souls?
-report from greenpeace says it will be tried in Canada first.
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/monsanto-pig-patent-111
Now THAT is scary. Although, if they don't suffer and eat each others asses and tails anymore, maybe the meat will be better(halal by science, no cruel death, if there is no life ot begin with)
I agree with Norman.
Im all in favor of the petri-pork. Illiminates the suffering. We get closer and closer to the jetsons where they just pop some pills in the morning and thats that.
No more pills dammit!
:)
I might have that wrong. There were 2 articles I read. One suggested no pigs, other suggest big bad fat monsanto pigs. Read the article though, it's spooky. The Jetsons cartoon-dream becomes a nightmare with the Monsanto-monster at the helm.
Is Monsanto the only company that will receive digs here? Surely there are other companies as well, or better yet, the groups that flock to buy the products that use the energy that buy the food that run the jobs that run our cars that run our lives.
What can you do as a person?
And what about the university that has contractual obligations with Monsanto that funds the researchers that pay into unions that enable access to needed health and social services that people deliver that also work for the univerisity and through those funds buys the art that we all love to make, an economy of trends and styles that no one can escape, only shape.
I guess it'll just have to be like the good Colonel says, 'kill the brutes, exterminate them all.'
Let us never forget.
What the ?%$^&!!
Carlos, was that just a defense for Monsanto? What can an individual do?! You can't be serious. You obviously want me to get carpal tunnel syndrome from typing a response. But I've learned my lesson (sort of) Check out that site I copied above.
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