Latest news with #MarcoEvaristti
USA Today
06-03-2025
- USA Today
Protest art piece planned to starve 3 piglets to death. Then they escaped.
Protest art piece planned to starve 3 piglets to death. Then they escaped. Three piglets have vanished from a controversial Denmark art exhibit in which they were deprived of food and water as a form of protest of mass meat production. Since debuting last week, the Copenhagen art installation − titled "And Now You Care?" − has captured headlines after an artist caged three live piglets and let them starve. The decision was part of an effort to raise awareness of the cruelty caused by the nation's pork industry, according to the Washington Post and The New York Times. Chilean artist Marco Evaristti said the animals disappeared after a maintenance crew briefly exited the room to clean a toilet, the Times reported. He said that animal rights activists were around at the scene. "After four minutes, they come out and it was no pigs," Evaristti told the Times. Copenhagen police have not confirmed whether the disappearance was theft though Evaristti reported it as such, according to the Post. He later learned that one of his staff had sought the help of the Organization Against the Suffering of Animals to snatch the piglets. USA TODAY has reached out to Evaristti and Copenhagen police for comment. Evaristti defends exhibit amid death threats Evaristti has said he has experienced outrage and death threats against him and his family following his exhibit. "I receive serious threats, hate letters - so my son is threatened and pictured with a garden cross on his forehead," he wrote on Facebook. Yet he has not wavered from his mission of showing the world the cruelty that pigs face, adding that he initially believed those on his team shared that same vision, the Washington Post reported. "I wanted them to die," Evaristti told the Post. "I wanted the people in Denmark to see how a piglet starves to death." High demand for pigs has led to a rise in both pig breeding and piglet morality, the Post reported. Denmark produces around 28 million pigs annually, according to the data from the Danish Food and Agriculture Council. Animal rights group says disappearance was not burglary or theft Organization Against the Suffering of Animals said in a Monday statement that the disappearance was not burglary or theft but rather an "arranged transfer" between one of Evaristti's staff. The colleague contacted the non-profit Saturday morning to say the pigs could be picked up that day, according to the statement. "We quickly initiated a plan for the collection, which was completed as agreed. During the pickup, there was no burglary or theft, and Evaristti's colleague delivered subsequent pig feed to our driver," the group said, adding that they want to "emphasize that our purpose in this case has been to keep the animals safe." Evaristti has previously hosted other controversial art exhibits, including one where people could turn on a blender with a swimming goldfish inside and another where he made and served meatballs out of his own body fat with agnolotti pasta, People Magazine reported.
Sky News
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Sky News
Artist abandons plan to starve piglets to death after animals stolen
An artist who tried to starve three piglets to death as part of a controversial exhibition says he has changed his plan after the animals were stolen. Chilean-born Marco Evaristti said he had wanted to raise awareness of the suffering caused by mass meat production with his art installation that opened last week in Copenhagen, Denmark. The piglets were being denied food and water and would have been allowed to starve to death. But Mr Evaristti said the piglets - dubbed Lucia, Simon and Benjamin - were taken by animal rights activists who were assisted by his friend, Caspar Steffensen. "I called up police on Saturday to report the piglets stolen and I had to shut down the entire exhibition because of that - so I was very disappointed when Caspar told me on Tuesday that he was involved in the theft," said Mr Evaristti, who also claimed to have received hate mail. "But then I thought about it for a few hours and realised that at least this way the piglets would have a happy life." Copenhagen police said they had received reports "that the pigs had been stolen from the exhibition". Mr Evaristti's exhibition, And Now You Care, involved a makeshift cage created with shopping trolleys containing the three piglets. He said the intention was to raise awareness about the cruelties of modern pig production in Denmark. The Animal Protection Denmark welfare group says sows are bred in the Danish pig industry to produce about 20 piglets at a time - but with only 14 teats, piglets are forced to compete for milk and often starve. However, several animal rights groups voiced concern about Mr Evaristti's exhibition, saying while they welcomed initiatives to raise awareness, they did not condone animal abuse. Mr Steffensen said he could not allow the three animals to face a painful death after his 10-year-old daughter had begged him to "make sure the piggies won't die". "So when I was approached by an activist to help free the animals, I let them into the gallery secretively on Saturday," he said. However, Mr Evaristti said he will revive the exhibition and hopes to somehow get dead piglets from meat processing plants and present them to the public. "I'm in the process of acquiring animals that have died of starvation or other terrible circumstances in agriculture. I want to display them in a transparent refrigerator," he told Denmark's Ekstra Bladet. He said his aim was to fill the transparent refrigerator to bursting point with dead animals to show how animals in agriculture are squeezed into small cages. Having acquired the refrigerator, he said he now just needed the dead animals. "I'm willing to pay a high price," he added.
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Yahoo
Protest art piece planned to starve 3 piglets to death. Then they escaped.
Three piglets have vanished from a controversial Denmark art exhibit in which they were deprived of food and water as a form of protest of mass meat production. Since debuting last week, the Copenhagen art installation − titled "And Now You Care?" − has captured headlines after an artist caged three live piglets and let them starve. The decision was part of an effort to raise awareness of the cruelty caused by the nation's pork industry, according to the Washington Post and The New York Times. Chilean artist Marco Evaristti said the animals disappeared after a maintenance crew briefly exited the room to clean a toilet, the Times reported. He said that animal rights activists were around at the scene. "After four minutes, they come out and it was no pigs," Evaristti told the Times. Copenhagen police have not confirmed whether the disappearance was theft though Evaristti reported it as such, according to the Post. He later learned that one of his staff had sought the help of the Organization Against the Suffering of Animals to snatch the piglets. USA TODAY has reached out to Evaristti and Copenhagen police for comment. Evaristti has said he has experienced outrage and death threats against him and his family following his exhibit. "I receive serious threats, hate letters - so my son is threatened and pictured with a garden cross on his forehead," he wrote on Facebook. Yet he has not wavered from his mission of showing the world the cruelty that pigs face, adding that he initially believed those on his team shared that same vision, the Washington Post reported. "I wanted them to die," Evaristti told the Post. "I wanted the people in Denmark to see how a piglet starves to death." High demand for pigs has led to a rise in both pig breeding and piglet morality, the Post reported. Denmark produces around 28 million pigs annually, according to the data from the Danish Food and Agriculture Council. Organization Against the Suffering of Animals said in a Monday statement that the disappearance was not burglary or theft but rather an "arranged transfer" between one of Evaristti's staff. The colleague contacted the non-profit Saturday morning to say the pigs could be picked up that day, according to the statement. "We quickly initiated a plan for the collection, which was completed as agreed. During the pickup, there was no burglary or theft, and Evaristti's colleague delivered subsequent pig feed to our driver," the group said, adding that they want to "emphasize that our purpose in this case has been to keep the animals safe." Evaristti has previously hosted other controversial art exhibits, including one where people could turn on a blender with a swimming goldfish inside and another where he made and served meatballs out of his own body fat with agnolotti pasta, People Magazine reported. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Starving piglets escape from protest art exhibit: Reports
New York Times
04-03-2025
- New York Times
Piglets Left to Die in Art Exhibition Are Stolen in Denmark
Three piglets were stolen from an art exhibition in Copenhagen over the weekend after a provocative artist said they would be allowed to starve to death in a commentary about animal welfare in Denmark, one of the world's largest pork exporters. The artist, Marco Evaristti, said in an interview on Monday that his exhibition, 'And Now You Care?,' was meant to 'wake up the Danish society' to the mistreatment of pigs, pointing to statistics that tens of thousands of pigs die each day because of poor conditions. 'I have some kind of voice as an artist to talk about the issue,' Evaristti, 62, said. 'So I will share my thoughts about what I think about the treatment of the animals in Denmark.' The exhibition, which opened on Friday inside a former butcher's warehouse in the Meatpacking District of Copenhagen, included three live piglets that were caged by two shopping carts on a pile of straw. Large-scale paintings of the Danish flag and slaughtered pigs hung on the walls. The pigs, which were given water but no food, were expected to live up to five days. Evaristti said he also would not eat or drink until the exhibition came to an end. But the pigs did not die. They disappeared. Evaristti, who was born in Chile, said that while the exhibition space was being cleaned on Saturday morning, members of an animal rights organization came to check on the piglets. Shortly after they left, the theft occurred. 'They closed the door while the cleaning people were cleaning the toilet,' he said, adding that the door was unlocked. 'After four minutes, they come out and it was no pigs.' A spokesman for the Copenhagen Police said that it was notified about the theft just before noon on Saturday and that nobody had been charged. Evaristti, who said he and his family had received numerous threats, does not expect the piglets to be returned. The use of animals in artwork is frequently criticized. In 2017, the Guggenheim in New York pulled three works involving animals from an exhibition by Chinese conceptual artists after protests and an online petition signed by more than half a million people. In 2000, Evaristti displayed 10 goldfish in individual blenders in a Danish museum and allowed visitors to turn on the machines. Some did. Animal rights groups were divided over Evaristti's latest exhibition, with some agreeing with his message but not his method and presentation. A review from a Danish newspaper slammed the exhibition as 'old-fashioned avant-garde.' Mathias Madsen, a campaign manager for Anima International Denmark, said in a statement that the organization had reported Evaristti to the police when he announced his plans to starve the piglets to death. 'This would violate multiple sections of the Danish Animal Welfare Act, and we wanted authorities prepared to intervene,' Madsen said, adding that the strong public reaction to the exhibition was a reminder that people find animal suffering unacceptable. There are about 5,000 pig farms in Denmark that produce approximately 28 million pigs annually, according to the Danish Agriculture and Food Council. Many are slaughtered, with more than 70 percent of the pig meat exported to countries within the European Union. Birgitte Damm, the chief consultant for farm animals and mink for Animal Protection Denmark, said about 25,000 piglets die each day in Danish stables, some from starvation, because the country's sows are bred to birth 20 piglets but have only 14 teats. 'We completely understand the indignation, frustration and even anger over the continued abuse of millions of pigs in the Danish pig industry,' Damm said about Evaristti's exhibition. 'This has been going on for decades, and it is completely unacceptable. However, we cannot allow three individual piglets to suffer in order to make our point.' Evaristti said his idea for the exhibition came from reading a newspaper article about the topic around October. 'I knew that something was wrong in Denmark, but I didn't know that it was so bad,' he said. On Monday night, he faced a critical question: What now? He said that an exhibition without the piglets would be 'boring' and 'plastic,' before he shut it down altogether on Tuesday. 'If you take your heart from your body, you cannot exist, only as the body without soul,' he said. 'My exhibition doesn't have a soul anymore. It's only a body and I'm not interested in representing a body. I want the soul with the body.'
Yahoo
02-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Twisted art installation features live piglets that will starve to death — to shed light on animal cruelty: ‘Sick act of torture'
A new art installation features three live piglets that will starve to death due to lack of food and water. The provocative exhibition, called 'And Now You Care,' opened on Friday in Copenhagen. Artist Marco Evaristti is hoping the piece will shed light on the cruelty of modern pig production in Denmark, where about 25,000 piglets die daily as a result of poor breeding conditions. Evaristti, a native of Chile, generated angry responses when he posted about the exhibit, where the pigs are displayed in a cage made of shopping carts, on his Instagram. As an ethical vegan I am appalled at this sick exhibition,' one commenter wrote. 'This is not the way, go to the slaughterhouses for vigils like the rest of us. Don't participate in cruelty.' 'Please do not starve these pigs,' said a third. 'They do not deserve to die a slow painful death on account of 'making a point.' You are no better than the problem you wish to solve.' 'WHAT A SICK ACT OF TORTURE OF INNOCENT PIGLETS,' someone else added. Denmark's largest and oldest animal welfare organization, Animal Protection Denmark, expressed mixed feelings about the installation. 'We completely understand the indignation' of the artist, said Birgitte Damm, a spokesperson for the organization. 'But we do not agree that three piglets, three individual living beings, should be starved and prevented from drinking until they die from it. It is illegal and it is abuse of the animals.' Although she disagreed with the way Evaristti went about advocating for the animals, Damm did say he was correct in posing 'the large questions about who we are as human beings or want to be, and what we are doing to fellow creatures in the name of enormous amounts of mass-produced cheap meat.' With Post Wires
