Humanely Slaughtered Human Meat
Berlin, 2022
I made a subversive supermarket fridge installation for the “WerbePause - Art of Subvertising” exhibition in the Kunstraum Kreuzberg Bethanien in Berlin which I also co-curated.
The initial fridge concept was devised with Antonio Velez and this artwork was part of the subversive supermarket stocked with ‘products’ by artists Illustrate Feccia, Doublewhy_Y, Matt Bonner, Hogre, Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives, Proyecto Squatters and Hushidar Mortezaie.
The initial fridge concept was devised with Antonio Velez and this artwork was part of the subversive supermarket stocked with ‘products’ by artists Illustrate Feccia, Doublewhy_Y, Matt Bonner, Hogre, Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives, Proyecto Squatters and Hushidar Mortezaie.
Welcome to this fictional, maybe-not-that-fictional, deli-fridge!
Since the 1980s, marketing, advertising, design and logos have become completely central to consumer capitalism. Entering a supermarket is to enter a bewildering dense core of consumerist images. Here you will find the deli counter full of “Humanely Slaughtered Human Meat!”
“For the people, by the people, made from people.”
‘Humane slaughter’ is as much an absurd design paradox for animals as ‘humane execution’ or ‘less-lethal weopons’ are for humans.
In Humanely Slaughtered Human Meat I hope to evoke how the meat and dairy industry are inseparable from the most pressing issues we face today: the climate crisis, infectious and chronic diseases, human exploitation, and of course, non-human exploitation.
