Wim Delvoye

Wim Delvoye has been tattooing pigs since the 1990s. In recent years it seems that more artists are killing animals in the name of art. What are your thoughts on this project? Should a line be drawn between branding animals for slaughter and consumption and tattooing and slaughtering animals in the name of art? What say you?

i copy and pasted that sentence. In the name of art??? what a strange phrase.

Bringing Home the Bacon: Wim Delvoye ArtAsiaPacific, pp. 154-159 30 September 2007

Interview with Delvoye and Paul Laster
SPERONE WESTWATER

WIM DELVOYE: I started in 1992, did one or two pigs in 1994 and in 1995 I tattooed 15, but they were dead pigs; I got the skins from slaughterhouses. I started to tattoo live pigs in 1997. I was interested in the idea of the pig as a bank – a piggy bank. I didn’t have the concept formulated yet, but I decided to place some small drawings onto these living organisms and let them grow. From the beginning, there was the idea that the pig would literally grow in value, but I also knew that they were considered pretty worthless. It’s hard to make something as prestigious as art from a pig. It’s not kosher."

"In the early works, the imagery was as banal and trivial as possible: skulls, hearts, crosses. It was an encyclopedia of trivial things. I wasn’t really interested in the pig’s anatomy. But once I started tattooing live pigs, I was forced to take an interest in their anatomy, and that affected the composition. I gained new respect for the animals and began making tattoos for them. For example, the tattoo would follow the butt and shoulders and, as the pig grew, it became paler while the lines became thicker."

"There are two schools of thought about how the pigs should be exhibited. Some people like the flat skins hanging on the wall because you still see bits of the head and legs. Others prefer the hairy skins stretched like a canvas. If I have a complete skin with hooves and ears intact, and I like the tattoo, then I stuff it. It becomes more sculptural that way. I used to have the stuffed pigs standing, but now I prefer them sitting, like a stone lion outside a Chinese restaurant." ‘Because they grow fast and they are so much better to tattoo than fish.’

Controversy!
The artist is killing animals for art. Well, other people kill them for food and that is unnecessary too. I think this work is very powerful and full of arguments, reasons, meanings and so it seems contradictions. I think Delvoye has taken it as a fact of life that these pigs would have died anyway so is treating them as a commodity but for novelty value rather than nourishment. These pigs would have lead a much better life than those we buy as bacon in the supermarket. They even get coal in winter when they're cold (bad!) Personally I wouldn't kill animals for the sake of art but criticism from people that eat meat is meaningless to me. love the tattoos of disney, Louis Vuitton and other 'iconic' things. Delvoye is a vegetarian.

"Some designs I try for the first time on people and, if they work, I will surely re-create the tattoo on a pig."

SO many people have the courage to say that this is cruelty online (as always). Calling tattoos mutilation! And saying it isn't art. haha. People are so quick to condemn him for allowing these animals to be slaughtered for their skin. Fucking morons. Even after they are dead these pigs are revered and on display, thats kind of sick but i think it's better than just being made into a ball or a piece of furniture. It is the people that purchase the pigs that decide to kill them, and the artist says that none of them keep the animal as a pet. Some let the pig die of old age, emphasis on the word let. I don't think that "it's better than" or a least he's not...: are justification for tattooing the pigs. I'm confused. You can never really do the animal's justice. Keeping them as a pet, releasing them into the wild, theres a form of cruelty involved in everything and it can't be avoided unless you were to go back hundreds of years and never eat the pigs in the first place. fuuuck i dont know. This work is powerful and i like it I'll leave it at that.

Tattooing, skin, life, permanence, animals, commodity; Delvoye's work contains many ideas that interest me and that i want to have within my own work. I've decided now that i don't really want to deal specifically with the animal issues and make it more about the female body and perceptions around that. I will still draw comparisons between humans and animals but will not let this take over my work. I think my work will be much stronger than last year with the added elements of feminism and the abject.

Delvoye's work Cloaca is shitty i love it, commodifying poos, not even real poos. thats the interesting part. He sells cloaca paraphenalia including tshirts and key chains. His shit is highly sought after.

Kiki Smith has a cool name

Messy, uncomfortable, open, personal, desires, bodily fluids, anxiety, body as landscape, architecture, taboo. BOO!

Kiki uses low art or craft mediums generally associated with women such as beading, embroidery, paper and glass. She combines these with formal materials associated with high art, MEN"": bronze and plaster. Combining these she effaces the purity of the high art materials. Totally copied that last sentence from a book :)
Her work responds to that of Cindy Sherman and Barbara Krueger, it is very feminist and deals with abjection in art. I love the photocopy/ print she has done of her face all flayed out as if the skin has been peeled from her head. It reminds me of an animal skin used as a floor mat or something, an object that people walk over carelessly. Leather chairs are like this for me, an animal skin encompassing foamy comfort. such a waste of animal using it for a stupid chair, luxurios masculine cold leather chair. Cracking and drying out like real skin does.
COMFORT?

Meat Arms 1992
Kiki uses animal flesh to create human arms then casts them in bronze. The result is a realistic looking arm with the skin peeled off revealing muscle tissue, MEAT. She has taken a universally repulsive subject and made it precious and beautiful by casting it in bronze. But at the same time she hasn't. Being bronze it is more valuable, it isn't human, its animal made to look like human, imitation.. does this make it more/less acceptable? She couldn't have used a real human arm to craft it of course, and animals are going to die anyway so meat is in ready supply. eeew kiki you sicko.

Train 1994
Wax figure with red beads trailing out of its vajayjay. Looks awesome! Hello sparkling bloody menstruation. Definitely a female figure, looks almost as if it is dragging chains, sort of painful, struggling??

illicit ticilli

Yesterday on the way to visit the tattoo place i walked past a bar, there was a man outside slumped over a table, he looked like he has passed out. The table had slats on top so there were gaps for his yellow vomit to pass through and land at his feet on the foot path. Lucky for him.
I didn't stop to help him, I even briefly thought about what it would look like as a photo how sick.
I went to illicit tattoos just because I knew it was there, the guy called Nic that does the piercing talked to me and was sort of like whaaat whyyyy. He said that skin shrinks a lot when you take it off so a lot more would have to come off, i expected that. He also said it is an awkward place to take skin from and that it wold hurt. I kind of figured that too. I think my penis toes have enough skin to go around. He suggested taking it off the back of my leg or somewhere unseen, he didn't really get where i was coming from.
On the bus on the way home a blind lady got on, the bus was packed to the point where people were standing in the aisles so it was hard for her to navigate. She was asking aloud if the bus went through Papakura. Nobody said a thing. She asked again with no response before saying HELLO then getting off the bus again. Why do people suck so much>? You would think out of 50 people that one person would know the answer to her question but nobody gave a shit. The people here all wear sneakers with jeans, its criminal! fuck you Auckland.

your skin

"Oddly enough each animal has just enough brains to tan its own hide. Brain tanning produces a beautiful buckskin and it does require a bit of work to produce it."-SOURCE


WOOOOAH! That site describes a few ways in which you can tan a hide and gives a few tips and methods on preventing it from shrinking. Apparently the tanning process destroys genetic information, that is a very interesting point when it comes to issues of identity and ownership. I found another website which must is quite funny Human leather Exclusive. Haha. You can even find some library books that are bound in human leather. The reason being that it was cheaply available at the time (late 1800's), durable and waterproof. The memoirs of George Walton, a highway man are bound in his own skin, but most of the books bound in human skin are medical books. So it can be done, I'm just unsure how different it will be using living flesh.

Nicola Costantino

Nicola Costantino works with leather and latex to create what looks similar to human skin because of the nipples! creepy and so cool! Her website is so great I love the little pig that navigates the page. One review i read by Roberta Smith denouncing her work as tasteless and gimmicky. It seems a little that way to me, a bit too obvious and a 'one liner' but nice ideas all the same.

writings from manapouri

I once spent $320 on a pair of boots. Leather of course because it lasts and it means QUALITY. They broke three times and have a hole in the toe. I can't wear them anymore, I'm not that keen on wearing someone or something elses skin on top of my own. I did a project on tattoos earlier in 2008, peoples opinions on skin are wonderful, the permanence of tattoos (permanence?) people aren't permanent. Its pretty precious to have that mind set. We all love our skin in different ways, we need it to live, to experience the world, to touch; it defines us.
Race-colour-tattoos
Tattoos are bad, so are piercings. So abnormal and SO extreme. Watching the body modification DVD i could not believe the breast implants and face lifts, yet somehow these are acceptable, 'normal' because they fit the standard beauty ideal, they 'enhance'. Tattos are beautiful and personal to their owners, they are unique. Breast implants. well.... they're tits.

I can't believe i own leather boots, or that i was proud of them, polished them, conditioned them, whatever.

On my own skin: It's nice. I have scars on my arms, neck, and chest mainly from burns. They don't worry me and I don't dee a need to change them or hide them. I like having my skin, i wouldn'twant anyone else walking around in it, not that they would want to you would assume.

I want to fix my precious boots, patch up the hole in the toe just to make them whole. I'm not throwing them away, giving them to anyone or selling them i don't see any point in that and it makes no statement whatsoever rather it ignores something very important, a change in ideals that has taken place. I feel that I should try to give something back after taking so much, always taking indirectly to avoid guilt and blame.

I will talk to some tattooists around auckland to see if anyone does scarification, also to a tanner or someone that works with leather products to find out what sort of process is involved. I want to get a small section cut out of my toe, cured and tanned then sewn onto my boot to fix the hole. My boots already disgust me and i am unsure how I would feel about them after doing this.

On Tattoos
I thought about getting one to mark a big change in my life, outwardly altering my body to let people know about it. This is a very personal project, i want to say that in doing this that the work is just for me but it can't be. I'm not hurting or pressuring anybody else, i think i will just show them what i have done and see what they think. People are so stupid. I expect people to be repulsed (if they thought hair was gross see this...)

ummmm, why?
I'm doing this to show that I strongly believe in something. I want to explore the term 'activism' and what this means in the way that i relate to people through my artwork. It's not a huge statement when you look at some of the people on BMEZine, it's pretty weak actually. One small piece of skin when I ate the flesh of other animals for twenty years, and the wound will heal. I'm in two minds about who this work is for, the process and action is for me, the result is for them.

DOCUMENTATION
I loathe it. A lot of the time i see no point in it but i guess it is necessary when you are at school. In this case however i will thoroughly document the process because it is so important, even the simple things like cleansing my skin and looking after it. Recording audio as well as images will allow a wide variety of combinations when putting the work together, it could possibly be quite performative.

HUMANE

DAY I

First day at Elam.
New school, new people, new lecturers, new cafe that burns my soy milk. Coolies.
Project one requires that we create two works of art by next monday to present in our space (if you can call thirteen people in a room space). A smaller space brings about a new set of confinements and implications to work with so can be quite exciting. Lots of room for interaction within the room, high ceilings, grey floors that are almost the right colour to project on to. I think i will use this short project as a social experiment to get an idea of people's feelings and reactions towards the materials I plan to experiment with.
I want to explore skin, people's skin, animal skin, leather, fur, shedding skin and hair-waste, reactions to all of these materials and how they are revered/ repulsive. I am interested in how we use leather so carelessly without really a thought to where it has come from, yet we are so precious when it comes to our own skin, not wanting to burn or scar it, wanting perfection.
Tattoos and scarification do not fit the beauty norm as plastic sugery does even though sugery is far more extreme, body mods such as piercings and large tattoos are considered more extreme. WELL theyre not.
I want to use materials from humans, and my first thought was to use some of my hair. Combing my fingers through my hair a lot of it falls out. It's gross unless it's still attached to your scalp, nobody likes stray hairs! It reminds me a lot of Mona Hatoum's works, she uses both internal and external elements involving human hair and images and recordings of her internal organs.