Food for Thought

The topic “what is art” has always been one that sparks debate. While some believe that true art is defined by beauty and limited to skills such as painting, others believe that art is what you make it...as soon as one utters the words “this is art” it automatically means that is. This topic was reconsidered in the controversial wake of “artist” Guillermo Vagas Habacuc, who chained a stray dog to a wall in a gallery in Mexico and invited people to watch it starve to death...with the words “ Eres Lo Que Lees” (You are what you eat) smeared in pet food on a nearby surface. The idea behind this horrific piece was that hundreds of dogs regularly die in the streets of Mexico; humans have become immune to the suffering they see – yet as soon as it is put in a different context, one that forces them to take notice and causes discomfort there is an outcry. In his own words, when “you publicly display one of these starving creatures” it “brings out the hypocrisy in all of us.” There work ignited the wrath of PETA as well as the general public, with petitions to have Habacuc removed from the running of the prestigious Central American Biennial awards. He was deemed a heathen monster, incapable of the beauty of art. Yet how has he failed? Is art’s function not to make us question the world around us, make visible the ignored, represent a certain truth? The infuriated responses of society proves that he has succeeded in doing this. Performance art is by definition “a defiance of orthodox art mediums” “conceptual” and intended, through shock, “to ignite change and expose the inadequacies of mankind” (1987: Sayre). Not one single person tried to unchain the dog. They simply observed, and complained. Thus Harbacuc has succeeded in exposing the uselessness and apathy of humanity through an avante-garde mode of performance that is, by all means, art.



Words: Chloe Hirschman

Works Cited
Gortais, B. 2003.“Abstraction and Art.” Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, Vol. 358, No. 1435, The Abstraction Paths: From Experience to Concept .Great Britain: The Royal Society.
Guillermo Habacuc Vargas, “An example.” Retrieved 20 October 2009 from http://guillermohabacucvargas.blogspot.com/.
Sayre, H. 1989. “The Object of Performance: The American Avante-Garde since 1970” Chicago: Chicago University Press.