Marco Evaristti
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Marco Evaristti, born 1963 in Chile, is a Danish artist.
After studying at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Evaristti gained notoriety for a museum display in 2000 that featured ten functional blenders containing live goldfish. The display, at the Trapholt Art Museum in Kolding, Denmark, invited guests to turn on the blenders. This led to museum director Peter Meyer being charged with, and acquitted of, animal cruelty.
Evaristti's next major work, in 2004, entitled Ice Cube Project, was to paint the exposed tip of a small iceberg red. This took place on March 24, in Kangia fjord near Ilullissat, Greenland. With two icebreakers and a 20-man crew, Evaristti used three fire hoses and 3,000 litres (790 US gallons) of paint to color the iceberg blood-red. He commented on this project that, "We all have a need to decorate Mother Nature because it belongs to all us."
In February 2000 the Trapholt Gallery in Denmark faced great controversy for exhibiting Chilean artist Marco Evaristti’s ‘Helena-the goldfish blender.’ An installation involving ten working blenders filled with goldfish. The work saw gallery director Peter Meyer charged with animal cruelty however after a lengthy court case he was acquitted. The purpose of the exhibition was one of audience interaction and response. He empowered his audience giving them the option to turn on the blenders to in turn kill the fish.
The act itself may be questionable and cruel in many eyes however there is no denying what it conceptually demonstrated. The audience were put in the position of many high status world leaders, the choice to flick a switch can in turn change destroy or save a life. He thus forced his audience to “do battle with their conscience” he aimed to “place people before a dilemma: to choose between life or death.” Some see the piece as “a protest against what is going on in the world-against cynicism-this brutality that impregnates the world in which we live”
After complaints from animal rights activists the matter was taken to court in which the debate moved from animal rights to the role of art. It was decided and proved that the death was instant and the fish were not in prolonged pain therefore the action did not count as cruelty to animals. However more importantly-the judge recognised and publicised that not only is this very much po-mo art but more importantly he decided that “an artist has the right to create works which defy our concept of what is right and wrong” and that it is the role of post modern art to contravene the conventions of society and of art itself.
Some say this work highlights our societies hypocrisy in that the killing of fish and animals is accepted if it is for our consumption however the work poses the question of where should the line be drawn about what is and isn’t acceptable treatment of animals.
