PETA complaint leads to controversial art installation being dismantled
A controversial art installation has been dismantled in Germany after animal rights organisation PETA filed a complaint.
The installation titled A Hundred Years, first exhibited in 1990 by artist Damien Hirst, was designed to see hundreds of flies die, prompting outrage from PETA.
The Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg museum was issued an oral warning from the German city’s veterinary office, to which Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg director Andreas Beitin told local media, “We thought flies were not covered by the Animal Welfare Act.”
A Hundred Years consists of a glass display case partitioned in half, with flies being hatched on one side of the glass.
When they venture through a hole in the partition, the flies are drawn to an artificial light which burns the flies on contact.
The cycle continues until the end of its exhibition.
Hirst has previously described the artwork as “a life cycle in a box.”
In the original iteration, the flies flocked around a bloody cow’s head, to which curator Hans Ulrich Obrist described the work in its original form as “dangerous and frightening.”
“Killing animals has nothing to do with art, it only shows the arrogance of people who literally go over corpses for their own interests,” Peter Höffken of PETA said in a statement.
According to Germany’s Animal Welfare Act, there “must be good reason for one to cause an animal harm.”
The managing director of the art museum, Otmar Böhmer, told the German Press Agency that they agree with PETA’s sentiment.
“We share the basic idea of the animal welfare organisation that animals are not there to entertain us or exploit them,” he said.
The museum said it will contact Hirst’s studio to establish whether A Hundred Years can be presented with artificial flies. If not, it has recommended that the work not be presented again.
Image credits: Getty Images