GRAIN: EMMEDIA Anthology of Critical Texts 2010/2011

Frank McKeough was her father, and the fish are similar to the animal sculptures he loved to make for her.

McKeough is a committed vegetarian, and this work comes from a very personal perspective. When I talked to her about the exhibition, she said she was afraid she was having too much fun with it. At the opening reception, the artist was decked out in a full chef’s uniform to wrangle “free-range” hot dogs back into the restaurant. With a long wooden stake in hand, she pushed the hot dogs from the grassy fields outside, through the main lobby, to the gallery and into their cage. It took nearly an hour to wrangle them all. Meanwhile, curious passers-by asked if they could touch the hot dogs, to which McKeough replied, “They’re quite friendly. We haven’t had a problem with them yet.”

The city of Lethbridge was developed largely on the basis of local ranching and farming, and the economy of the area is still dependent on agribusiness. Given this context, it is no surprise that the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery has programmed a group of exhibitions called Food Series, exploring social and cultural issues related to food production, supply and consumption.

The Lion’s Share was commissioned as part of this series, to reflect on our relationship to animals and animal by-products as food. In North America, industrial farming, mass food production and long-distance grocery distribution serve to disconnect consumers almost entirely from the sources of their food.

McKeough’s ubiquitous hot dogs encompass one of the most extreme disconnects to be found at the supermarket. Intensely processed with added fillers and preservatives, the final vacuum-packed product is completely disassociated from its animal origins. As omnivorous consumers, we in turn are effectively disassociated from any sense of responsibility for our choices. By giving these hot dogs new and personable lives in her restaurant, McKeough highlights this problematic relationship. As Italian psychologist Emanuela Cenami Spada wrote: Anthropomorphism is a risk we must run, because we must refer to our own human experience in order to formulate questions about animal experience…. The only available “cure” [for anthropomorphism] is the continuous critique of our working definitions in order to provide more adequate answers to our questions, and to that embarrassing problem that animals present to us.1 What is that embarrassing problem? That we don’t simply project human experiences onto animals; we are (and are not) animals.2 There is a very dark, yet humorous commentary running through The Lion’s Share. While the installation may seem like a clear argument for vegetarianism at first glance, when it comes to eating animals, there is never a straightforward case. This is what writer Jonathan Safran Foer discovered, “It’s a slippery, frustrating, and resonant subject. Each question prompts another, and it’s easy to find yourself defending a position far more extreme than you actually believe or could live by. Or worse, finding no position worth defending or living by.”3 — 16 —