Elvira   Bozga

The Institutionalized Oblivion/ Uitarea institutionalizata

 

The artworks from the series “The institutionalized oblivion” are based on photos taken in various slaughterhouses even though not their exact representation. 

An unpopular subject, that nobody wants to know anything about, the slaughterhouse- the place where the animals are reduced to a simple piece of meat, the place that no one thinks about. This is not an accident nor a simple overlook, but actually a deliberated fact.

From a conceptual point of view, the slaughterhouse examination as an institution has a lot to offer: it is a location from which we can observe economical and geographic changes in the food production, the cultural attitudes on killing, the shift in the sensitive relations between human and nonhuman animals. The consumers want more and more to pull the slaughterhouse out of sight, and the companies are more than happy to fulfill their desire.

Why is this veil of oblivion pulled over it? Does the slaughterhouse mean more than we are prepared to think of? Is it a form of concentration of the human violence in an institution working under gouvernment rules?

The works offer an energetic mix of visual experiences, the living creatures are blocked inside homogeneous blocks of matter that are bordering their freedom. The images are mute, the animals or only certain parts of them are suspended, caught with hooks to the cold industrial parts and only the blood gives the idea of movement.

With the graphic lines compositional stability and unity was gained, and the combination between them, the visible gestural brush strokes and the flat blocks of matter represents the whole palette of feelings and attitudes that are to be discovered step by step by the viewer.

The vivid colors of the meat are opposing the cold colors of the industrial plant and of the ambient. Painting meat offers a great realm of color tonality and a rich visual experience.