Humans and Other Animals

Ingress

The DNA of dogs began to deviate from that of wolves around 15,000 to 40,000 years ago. The aurochs was domesticated around 10,000 years ago. Since then a lot has happened. Today, almost all of the cows, pigs, and chickens of the Western world live in factories and are invisible to most people; they are supposed to grow quickly in order to provide us with food as cheaply as possible. Companion animals, on the other hand, have enjoyed a rise in status as people moved from the country to the city and brought cats and dogs with them into houses and apartments. Today, they are seen as family members. Regardless of how these domesticated animals live, though, it is we humans who rule over them.

Lisa Strömbeck, artist and curator of this exhibition, grew up on a small farm in eastern Scania. Twenty years ago, she did a solo exhibition in these rooms, entitled Humans and Animals. At that time, the discussion of speciesism had hardly begun, but today, it is a term that is used alongside “racism” or “sexism.” Biologically, humans are no longer seen as exceptional. Researchers are mapping one species after another in terms of emotions, language, and instincts, and it is showing that we mammals are incredibly similar. As a result, today we tend to speak of humans and other animals or about non-human animals.

Academically, this mindset is developing – but in practice, capitalism reigns. Sweden has a somewhat better system of animal protections than the rest of the EU; for example, Sweden alone has a law demanding that cows should be out to pasture 2—4 months of the year. But Swedish farmers often say they think the law should be changed so that they can compete with other countries’ prices in the international market. But is that really necessary? To quote Mahatma Gandhi: “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”

Contributing artists: Annika Eriksson, Asmund Arle, EvaMarie Lindahl, Jonatan Pihlgren, Nathalia Brichet and Camilla Nørgård, Lisa Strömbeck, Smac McCreanor, William Hogarth.

About the Exhibition’s Curator

Lisa Strömbeck was born in 1966 in Andrarum in eastern Scania. Today, she lives and works in Ny Hammersholt on North Zealand in Denmark. Since studying at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in the late 1990s, her work has been exhibited all over the world. Her artistic practice includes photography, video, and installation. Strömbeck embraces juxtapositions of love, ownership, and power with a recurring theme of hierarchies between humans and other animals, in which she wants to inspire empathy for the less fortunate. Between 1997 and 2009, Strömbeck also produced works for public spaces with the feminist artists’ collective Kvinder på Værtshus (Women Down the Pub).