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Guillermo Vargas, “Exposición N° 1” (2007): perhaps the most controversial work of art using animal cruelty for aesthetic purposes, the artist tied a stray dog to the gallery wall to stay until it (allegedly) starved to death (actual proceedings and the dog’s whereabouts remain unknown). At the time it garnered more attention online from outraged animal rights activists than actual discourse within the art world. Understandably, a divisive issue of whether or not we should even call this “art.” Where do I personally fall? If a urinal in 1917 can be called art, I see no reason this should be any different. Of course it’s art, but not necessarily very good or successful art. Even if Vargas empathizes with the starving animal, and even if the rampant meat industry makes this act of animal cruelty look like a breezy walk in the park (a red herring I might add), I ultimately find this project distastefully exploitative of shock value that muffles out its political or social objective. Instead of becoming a critique of the hypocrisy of gallery institution or of the Nicaraguan’s inept government, poverty, power struggles, the drug war, the piece became merely and issue of animal abuse and how far one is willing to go in the name of aesthetics. Often contemporary art deals with embodying a metaphor, or conveying a message. The artist needs to take personal responsibility for that message—e.g. is it worth the life or suffering of another animal? Vargas’s challenging project does raise this question, but becomes mere controversy in the eyes of the public. Ultimately, this’ll be the work that Vargas will forever remain notorious for, and so I think his project in many respects has failed to achieve what it was intended to. I personally think some of his other works in the exhibition were more interesting than this one.
Source: Wikipedia
