Rossella Biscotti
Why Look at Animals? A Case for the Rights of Non-Human Lives is a major group exhibition that centres on animal rights and animal well-being, highlighting the need to recognise and defend the lives of non-human animals in an anthropocentric world that marginalises, oppresses and brutalises them. The exhibition is inspired by the seminal text of the same name by John Berger, “Why Look at Animals?” (1980), which explores the animal-human relationship in modernity and how animals have become marginalised in human societies. With the participation of more than 60 artists from four continents and with over 200 works occupying all the floors of the Museum, Why Look at Animals? is the largest exhibition ever organized by EMΣT and the first major exhibition on non-human animal rights internationally.
The exhibition and public programme organised around it aim to raise awareness of the conditions of non-human animal life today – from the agricultural industry, the science lab and the business of entertainment, to the state of wildlife and animals subsisting in urban environments – asserting the personhood of animals as sentient beings, with unique intelligences of their own. Why Look at Animals? highlights the fact that the myriad species that exist alongside us are an integral part of our biosphere and ecosystems, not products and automata, separate from and subordinate to us. With this project EMΣT puts ecological justice and the rights of non-human life at the heart of its programming for the months to come. If humanity wants to engage with climate justice, biodiversity and environmental protection, non-human animals form an integral part of the discussion.