Wim Delvoye is a Flemish contemporary artist, whose work breaks boundaries and challenges notions of ethics. His art aims to be provocative and that is certainly what Tattooed Pigs and Art Farm does.
He started tattooing pig skin in the early 1990s and wrapped his art work around polyester moulds. It wasn’t until 1997 that Wim started to use live pigs as his canvas and in 2004 he bought a farm near Beijing, where animal welfare laws are not as strict as other places.
Art Farm sees the piglets cared for by specialists who clean the pig’s wounds and moisturise the pig’s newly tattooed skin regularly. The animals are anaesthised and tattooed by up to three people at a time, with images including Disney Princesses and fashion brand logos.
Buyers can choose whether to buy the tattooed pigs alive or as taxidermy specimens when they die of natural causes. The pigs are not killed for their skin but they live and grow to be older pigs, in order to produce the live canvas that is their skin. The tattoos grow as the pigs do, images stretch and get bigger as does their value and desirability.
The animals skin is has been known to sell for more than £55,000, skin was sold to Chanel to be made into two exclusive handbags. Animal rights campaigners have complained that the pigs are put under unneccassary trauma and being abused for commercial profit.
Wim has also tattooed a man’s back in 2006 with a mixture of Japanese koi fish and Christian iconography. The piece was sold and the buyer will collect the piece when the wearer has died.
What do you think about Tattooed Pigs, is it art or animal cruelty?
Yesterday’s news….no I take that back, last years news. This website is the public “face” of the magazine, try a little harder.
Surely animal cruelty
Yes, but also an indictment of our dealings with animals.