New York-based artist and photographer Miru Kim bridges the socially constructed gap between human and beast in her stunning art series - The Pig That Therefore I Am. By placing her naked body among several hundred pigs in a factory farm barn, she found ways to connect to the pigs in an art experiment that is both mesmerizing and poignant.
“Through the sensations of skin on skin, living bodies in the external world are formed, in relation to the self. When two bodies come in contact–each of them touching and being touched at the same time–the souls meet and interweave on the skin,” explains her artist’s statement.
Pigs, highly intelligent animals, are raised in confinement and forced to serve as slaves to feed the human desire for flesh, transplantable heart valves, bones grafts, insulin and even implant collagen. However, even though they serve this valuable and often life-saving function, pigs are treated as unthinking, unfeeling objects of scorn.
Miru Kim sees things differently.
“Pig eyes are remarkable. They see right into the eyes of a human being. When they were looking at me, exposed before them, surrounded by them, I could not read their gazes, but they were somehow shockingly familiar,” she explains.
The Pig That Therefore I Am continues at the Doosan Gallery in New York City until April 23, 2011.
Visit: http://www.mirukim.com/
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written by Anna , April 02, 2011