The art installation, whcih opened last week in the city of Copenhagen, saw three little piglets denied food and water as spectators could witness their demise through complete and total neglect, per the AP. Artist Marco Evaristti had named the piglets Lucia, Simon and Benjamin. Those piglets were stolen by animal rights activists who likely agreed with Evaristti's point, without agreeing on how he executed the marketing of that point.
The thief, Caspar Steffensen, was a friend of Evaristti. "I called up police on Saturday to report the piglets stolen and I had to shut down the entire exhibition because of that — so I was very disappointed when Caspar told me on Tuesday that he was involved in the theft," said Evaristti.
Steffensen said he was moved to free the pigs after his 10-year-old daughter begged him not to let the "piggies" die. He was "approached by an activist to help free the animals," he said, and proceeded to "secretly" let them into the gallery over the weekend.
Though Evaristti lamented the early closure of his exhibit, he also said that after the theft, he "thought about it for a few hours and realized that at least this way the piglets would have a happy life." Animals rights groups that oppose pig production in Denmark, which sees sows birthing 20 piglets at once while being physically unable to feed that many at once, also opposed the use of animals' suffering to make the point that animals suffering is not great.
Evaristti is not deterred from his concept, however, and has said that he's considering restaging the exhibit with dead piglets instead and is also considering buying three more piglets to auction them off to good homes. He told the AP that he "got a lot of hate messages from around the world — I think people don’t get that my art is about animals rights."
Evaristti also staged an exhibition in which ten blenders sat plugged in, each containing one goldfish, and encouraged viewers to turn them on and watch the goldfish die. That exhibit, which also featured a photograph of a blindfolded man with military trousers around his ankles, was "ultimately about a person’s journey in the world."
"Evaristti believes there are three types of person: The Sadist, the Voyeur and the Moralist," reads the description of the exhibit on his site. It is perhaps clear which category Evaristti himself falls into.
