Michel Vanden Eeckhoudt and Magali Lambert — Arcoop Wall Project ‘Animalités’
Arcoop
32 rue des Noirettes – 1227 Carouge (SWITZERLAND)
From September 25 to October 10, 2021
The 21st century, renewed reflection on the diversity of living beings has generalized the idea that man is not the centre of the world and that his existence is not the end of evolution.
Ethology and cognitive science have shown that the existence of sometimes complex cultures is not specific to our species but is found in many other animals.
The animals represented in the series belong to all sorts of species, real, fantasized, metaphorical or even artificial beings. They are wild, bred or domesticated, free or captive. Alive they are prolific, rare, endangered. Dead they serve as food, trophies, decorative objects or fetishes. They are familiar, irritating, reassuring or worrying. The exhibition does not propose an answer to the questions raised by the relationship between man and other animals, but invites reflection and possibly contributes to the development of the visitor’s own opinion.
The pretext for the images may be their pet animal, a stalk in relation to a territory or an idea, the chance of an encounter. Sometimes the photograph is staged, artificially posed, massively retouched, even fabricated. Sometimes the animal is a subject among others it can belong to the personal mythology of the photographer.