3M
oryginal tittle: “3M”
(2020)
80 x 15 x 41 cm
Acrylic resin, steel
Photo: Igor Haloszka, Wojtek Ciszkiewicz
Frightened and pained animals are fastened to the walls with metal hoops. A group of animal activists secretly recorded the conditions under which experiments were carried out at the Laboratory of Pharmacology and Toxicology in Frankfurt, soon hailed as the Laboratory of Death. Using the influence of social media, the activists managed to put pressure on the administration, which soon led to the Laboratory centres’ closure and the rescue of some of the animals. The Laboratory conducted experiments on behalf of chemical companies marketing medical, industrial and agricultural products. Toxic substances were administered to animals in the laboratories to test the safety limit for humans.
Animals were literally poisoned. The footage showed a shocking level of suffering. Most of the procedures performed on animals had no scientific justification, so the general good did not sufficiently justify the evil done. Ida sculpted the silhouette of the tormented monkey by juxtaposing materials of different plasticity, the soft and pliable clay from which she fashioned the animal and the hard, cold steel of the rim.
Unlike other attention-grabbing tactics, sculpture has a commemorative, even martyrological dimension. When activism uses the timeless sculptural form, it evokes the different ways of social functioning of museums, including their role as memory places. The sculptural form makes the image of a suffering being into evidence of not only a specific callousness in a specific place and time, but also becomes an extended evidence of the callousness that human beings in general can become capable of.
Paweł Brylski
