OK, I am more than slightly disturbed by this little story that I came across! There is a Belgian artist named Wim Delvoye, who is apparently inspired by his rural, small town upbringing where the pigs outnumbered the people. He has hired a bunch of farmers, and is raising about 20 pigs in the tiny village of Chenjiatuo, China on his “Art Farm”.

So, he takes these pigs, sedates them and then tattoos them with all sorts of images: roses, mermaids, angels- they look like little, pink, living Ed Hardy billboards.

Apparently, the pigs live good, pampered lives on this farm… and are bought and raised by these foster farmers until their natural deaths, when they are skinned and their hides stretched. Anyway, it’s supposed to be art

So why Louis Vuitton hides???

Says Delvoye, “We saw all these fake Louis Vuitton designer bags. You always read in newspapers about other countries complaining about these fakes and then, as an artist, I’m interested in what’s fake and what’s real,” Delvoye said. “I like to play with ownership rights.”

I guess!

Here’s an odd little video about the “artist” and his pigs.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUcX0owdIhY]

Tags: Appropriation, art, Louis Vuitton, pigs, tattoo, Wim Delvoye

This entry was posted on Friday, October 19th, 2007 at 1:12 am and is filed under Wim Delvoye. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.