A man ties a dog to a wall inside an art gallery. No, you heard me correctly – we're not talking about the night janitor who caught the starving animal littering the front steps of the gallery, which he considered high-maintenance, and decided to vent a lifetime of frustration by pulling off an act to the dog. We're talking about a man who calls himself an artist. His name is Guillermo Vargas Habacuc and the year is 2007. Guillermo is one of the artists taking part in an art exhibition that takes place at a Costa Rican gallery – pompously called "Centro Nacional de la Cultura”. He pays a bunch of kids to catch the street dog, which he cruelly baptizes "Natividad" (Spanish for "birth"). His aim is to make an artistic statement about the fragility and the misery in which all dogs – indeed, all human beings live, and he achieved just that by letting the dog starve to death tied to a wall, in plain view of the exhibition visitors, some of whom demanded futilely that the dog be released. The dog stayed there, tied to the wall with a rope, malnourished and dehydrated while visitors watched over the dog with their chili cheese hot dogs with jalapenos on the side and an extra large jug of the newest diet soda.
It is present that our society may be a bit twisted, demeaned, and degraded to the point where other’s misery is the root cause of one’s self-satisfaction. Guillermo, however, portrayed the most complex yet simplistic message given to society than anything else could ever have. Moreover, although it may be controversial the way Guillermo presented this message may be unjustified; no other artist has given the depth Guillermo has shown with this ‘exhibition.’ It comes to a point where the artist, Guillermo Vargas, takes one of the most brilliant stances I have ever seen—brave and intelligent. You may think I’m crazy, but I’ll explain.
Frankly, the idea that people actually care about the well being of people or creatures outside of their personal sphere of acquaintances is a very shallow pretense. If we've never met them, odds are that we don't care about whether they live or die.
If it's such barbarism to let a dog die of neglect, then every single person who lets an idle moment go by is complicit in the deaths of those they could've been helping with that time. Anyone who expends more resources than are absolutely necessary to live is guilty of the same. This news story is now international. There aren't many people in the civilized world who don't know about this. One man ties a dog up and it starves, and everyone cares and congregates to sign a petition barring this man from presenting more of his art... Meanwhile thousands or millions of dogs die every year. We go about our everyday lives never thinking about them, but as soon as one guy lets one dog starve, it’s suddenly a sensational news story that spreads grander than ever, and everyone is infuriated. Technically, we're ALL allowing dogs to starve every day by failing to do anything. If we can gather by the thousands or millions to protest one man starving a single dog, why can't we do that for the millions of other dogs dying everyday? How about the hundreds of species in danger of extinction due to human interference? How about what’s left of our rain forests? The hundreds of impoverished children that perish everyday? This whole thing really does showcase how indifferent humans are until something is shoved right under our noses. Guillermo may have done something unspeakably cruel, but he’s succeeded in highlighting all our hypocrisy, and has shown that we continue to do things much more cruel without giving it a thought. There are children working fourteen hours a day in sweat shops all over the world, tying little tiny knots in the half-light, sewing your $200 sneakers… If everyone lived like you and me, we'd need five times the natural resources the earth presently has. If you want to save the children, or the starving dogs, or the rain forest, get ready to give up your mp3 player, your furnace, your computer, your designer jeans, and your wide screen television. Still want to save the children? Yeah, I didn't think so. Signing these petitions to block one artist’s work isn't changing squat, all it shows is that we care about the wrong things, and ignore the bigger picture according to what’s convenient to us.
Yale student, Aliza Shvarts’s senior art project, set to go on display next week, included video of her bleeding in her bathtub, as well as plastic sheeting layered with a mixture of Vaseline and post-abortion blood. She told classmates she had herself artificially inseminated as often as possible, then took legal herbal abortifacient drugs and filmed herself in her bathtub cramping and bleeding from the miscarriages. Just as similar as artist, Guillermo, Aliza wants to make a statement. The issue of abortions has been long-risen and long-standing. Aliza successfully portrays that when women are currently opposing the ideal of abortions and the correlation between the human body and the rights of one’s potential life, it is ultimately the women’s decision. Nobody even knew Aliza had artificially inseminated herself, nor did they know she was inducing her own abortions during the time. It comes to show how shallow people are to what ultimately, is one’s individual right. It is controversial once more, that a potentially born fetus has the right to live, however, the thing is, people are going to make their own decisions and we won’t achieve this utopian world where we get what we want. Nobody said life was fair and Aliza conveys this message in her art project. We are so caught up with telling and portraying what WE want as individuals, that we neglect the feelings of others, their rights, and the big picture.
These "artists" makes some hardened criminals come across as kind and considerate people. Some of you may shrug and say, "it's only a dog" or “it’s only a fetus” or “it’s a DOG” or “it’s a BABY”. The truly shocking part however is that Guillermo Vargas Habacuc has been selected to represent Costa Rica in the prestigious "Bienal Centroamericana Honduras 2008" and repeat his "experiment". Aliza Schwartz on the other hand, has been chosen to display her artwork which features hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting around this cube; lined between layers of the sheeting as the blood from Shvarts' self-induced miscarriages mixed with Vaseline in order to prevent the blood from drying and to extend the blood throughout the plastic sheeting. Aliza Shvarts will then project recorded videos onto the four sides of the cube. These videos, captured on a VHS camcorder, will show her experiencing miscarriages in her bathroom tub. Similar videos will be projected onto the walls of the room.
To make matters better in the end, the dog is released, fed, and survives. Aliza and Yale University have both been framed for the hoax of her actually artificially inseminating herself and carrying out such abortions. Both experiments and pieces of art were in some way a hoax, but we are offered such consolation.
The purpose and mission of art isn't to be pretty or to be liked but to make us think and feel. This “hideous” thing, as some would say, Shvarts has made won't go away because we don't like it or the “shallow” art Guillermo displayed won’t stop being news interntationally. If by making this speech changed one person’s mindset about the issue Guillermo presented or Aliza Shvart’s senior project, then the artist did their job.
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