Juan Le Parc

Date: 12/June/2019 Category:

About the artist

juanleparc.com

In Meat Temple, the visitors explore an ancient temple composed of meats (chorizo, ham, mortadella or salami). Cows and pigs, both symptomatic and symbolic animals, represent religious as well as moral food taboo. Le Parc creates a theatrical animal tragedy that confronts the user with the duality of mass consumption and animal adoration. The animals are staged in a slow, macabre and mechanical choreography on the verge of agony and cannibal carnage. The scream-like church bells chime in unison with the automatic reverberations of the slaughterhouses, announcing the start of the production aka the industrial suffering chain. In the second part, human animals appear. All of them suffer from malnutrition, and their bodies revolt against this injustice, eager to fight the wars of hunger and satiety. The last part ends in the middle of the temple—the bargaining table—of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, which is set for a carnivorous and cannibalistic feast.