ANIMAL.ANIMA.ANIMUS.
MEDIA RELEASE
Translated with ChatGPT
Animal. Anima. Animus.
Pori Art Museum, 6th June – 30th August 1998
Marina Abramovic . Colin Beatty . José Bedia . Xu Bing . Hubert Duprat . Thomas Grünfeld . Jan Harrison . Jussi Heikkilä . Cornelia Hesse-Honegger . Kaisu Koivisto . Per Maning . Dennis Oppenheim . Michal Rovner . Carolee Schneemann . Yukinori Yanagi
The artists of the Animal. Anima. Animus exhibition conceptualize important, contemporary, and often challenging questions about animal existence—animality—and especially the relationships between humans and animals. The themes of the exhibition and its accompanying publication address animals in society, animal communities, cultural images of animals and their meanings, as well as questions regarding animal rights, awareness, and their role in human life.
Animals can be approached in many ways: as sources of life force and original wisdom, cosmological beings, immortal spirits, pets, mirrors of ourselves, models for behavior, protective sacrificial animals… Some of the artists in the exhibition literally work with live animals, either using them as form-givers or even as the actual executors of their works. Others draw inspiration from animal-related mythologies and spiritual experiences.
In this exhibition, animals are neither wards nor exploitable intermediaries. On the contrary, Animal. Anima. Animus presents an alternative example: animals should not be understood as beings from another world, nature, but rather as co-inhabitants of this shared world with humans.
The art projects implemented in Pori will be documented in a publication released during the summer of 1998. This collection of essays addresses both creativity and the cultural objectification of animals while comparing prehistoric, historical, and contemporary attitudes toward animals. The contributors include writer and cultural critic John Berger (UK/France), philosophers Ben-Ami Scharfstein (Israel) and Val Plumwood (Australia), cultural anthropologists Tim Ingold (UK) and Gisli Palsson (Iceland), architect Juhani Pallasmaa, and ecologists Yrjö Haila and Daniel Simberloff (USA).
The exhibition was curated by Marketta Seppälä (Pori) and Linda Weintraub (New York).
The exhibition is open Tuesday to Sunday, 11 am – 6 pm, Wednesdays 11 am – 8 pm. Closed on Mondays.
Inquiries and group bookings: Tel. +358 2 621 1081, 621 1086, 621 1080, Fax +358 2 621 1091. Book orders: Tel. +358 2 621 1087, email: taidemuseo@pori.
Publications:
ISBN 951-9355-60-X
Animal, Anima, Animus. (Finnish)
Pori Art Museum 6.6.-30.8.1998
Editors of the publication: Marketta Seppälä, Linda Weintraub, Jari-Pekka Vanhala
Lay-out: Jari-Pekka Vanhala
Photography and video technology: Erkki Valli-Jaakola.
© Pori Art Museum, Exhibition Centre FRAME, artists, authors, photographers
Cover photo: the sheep Omena and Onerva, 1998, from Xu Bing’s Net and Meadow (1998).
Pori Art Museum Publications 42 / Pori Art Museum Publications 42
Length: 76 p
ISBN 951-9355-61-8
Animal.Anima.Animus.
Pori Art Museum 6.6.-30.8.1998
Marina Abramovic, Colin Beatty, José Bedia, Xu Bing, Hubert Duprat, Thomas Grünfeld, Jan Harrison, Jussi Heikkilä, Cornelia Hesse-Honegger, Kaisu Koivisto, Per Maning, Dennis Oppenheim, Michal Rovner, Carolee Schneemann, Yukinori Yanagi
Editors: Marketta Seppälä, Jari-Pekka Vanhala, Linda Weintraub
Essays by John Berger, Christian Besson, Hannu Castrén, Yrjö Haila, Tim Ingold, Juhani Pallasmaa, Gisli Pálsson, Tanja Pol, Van Plumwood, Gertrud Sandqvist, Ben-Ami Scharfstein, Marketta Seppälä, Daniel Simberloff, Peter Suchin, Jari-Pekka Vanhala and Linda Weintraub
English
283 s.
Pori Art Museum Publications 43, 1998