I recently wrote a short arti­cle on my per­sonal blog about Habakkuk Guillermo Vargas who did and was given per­mis­sion by a gallery to exhibit a dog (puppy) starv­ing to death. The dog could have been saved or given a com­fort­able death, but the gallery owner or Mr. Vargas would not allow anyone to inter­fere with the mon­strous exhi­bi­tion that was being paraded as Art.

The Visual Arts Bien­nial of the Cen­tral Amer­i­can have deemed this behav­ior as accept­able and have invited Mr. Vargas to repeat his per­for­mance for the pres­ti­gious 2008 Bien­nial. Please boy­cott the event and sign the petition.

The Visual Arts Bien­nial of the Cen­tral Amer­i­can should not be allowed to con­done Mr. Vargas’ actions as it reflects on every person in the cre­ative com­mu­nity as they are seen by the gen­eral public as rep­re­sent­ing us as an indus­try. And more impor­tantly animal abuse is just not accept­able full stop.

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Update…
“La Nación, the daily news­pa­per in Costa Rica, pub­lished an arti­cle saying that the dog had died during the exhi­bi­tion. For two months noth­ing hap­pened, and out of the blue the Direc­tor of the gallery, obvi­ously to dif­fuse mount­ing public pres­sure, stated that she had planned to keep the dog, but it had escaped. Why did it take her so long to come out with the state­ment? If the dog had escaped why didn’t she say so in the first place?

We have prima facie evi­dence that the dog died in the gallery, pos­si­bly as a result of the abuse he was sub­jected to, but we have no proof of that because we cannot pro­duce pho­tographs of a dead dog. We there­fore cannot accuse Vargas of bio­cide (the murder of ani­mals) but we CAN accuse him of animal abuse, and the peti­tion urges every­one to boy­cott him for doing that.” – Jaime Sancho Torelló

“The dog was starv­ing to death on the streets of Man­agua, a Nicaraguan city noto­ri­ous for cru­elty to dogs. Habacuc took it off the street and tied it up in the gallery for one day. At the end of the day it was fed and sent to a care home.

The whole idea behind the instal­la­tion was to raise aware­ness and I think you will agree it has been successful.” – Damien Hirst

Related News

• THIS IS NOT A LOVE PAINT
• Irene Gallo’s The Art Depart­ment is one
• Michael Gre­aney – Animal Instinct

Cats: Editor's Choice, News
Tags: Costa Rica, daily newspaper, Damien Hirst, food, Guillermo Vargas, Habakkuk Guillermo Vargas, Jaime Sancho Torelló, La Nación, Managua