Innate Releasing Mechanism

Elmo, Sid, Tallulah, Cheese Puff, Normal, Birdman, Mooie, Gizmo. Daisy, Sunshine, Squeakers, Dinky, Jitters, Yoo Hoo, Buster, Bagel Bill, Angel, Phoenix, Blue.

These are the names that humans give to animals, pets. Cute names. Reassuring, harmless names. Names that tell us more about our desire for Blue than they do about Blue’s innate Blueness.

Satan, Unknown.

The pet function;  an obsessive need for soft companionship, a perfect passive partner. A natural give-and-take. We give shelter, food, command and the chance to be human, to train, to obey, to love.  The more we love them the more they depend on our love for survival. It’s when we can’t perceive their mute gratitude, their end-of-the-bargain, that Fuzzy’s survival becomes threatened. And sometimes lost.

Artist Dana Holst has adopted this theme, the breakdown of human/animal relations,  as the basis for her newest series of paintings entitled Woebegone. Holst is interested in human nature. Cruel children, contorted dancers, dolled-up babies and abused animals recur as subjects in her work detailing the ways in which cultural anxieties often manifest themselves in the victimization the small, the feminine and the weak. Holst’s subjects’ often stare back at the viewer with big pleading eyes, demanding the examination of the oft-absent perpetrator. Or ultimately, the conditions in society that allow for and motivate such cruelties to happen.

 Woebegone is a series of 80 minature portraits of abused and tortured pets painted painstakingly on victorian ivory piano keys. In the gallery these tiny tombstones are arranged evenly along a green mohair meridian that circles the gallery. Viewers are encouraged to view each minature through the magnifying glasses provided, bringing these tiny victims into sharp painful focus. A drowned puppy, a burned kitten, a garbage-fed seal, a tortured bunny look out questioningly, through the magnifying glass, immortalized in their anguish. Together they tell a human story, or rather the story of how human bonds breaks down, destroying their delicate lives.

 

BH : Your work often focuses on victims and seems to question the conditions that allow cruelties to happen to them. Since your ‘Pounding’ series of portraits of impounded animals you have focused on pets. Why did you start focusing on animals?

DH : I began my series "Pounding" after adopting my dog Oscar from the Edmonton Humane Society, and this event caused me to analize my ideas and emotions about the many aspects of wanting, having and being responsible for a pet. Initially I was apprehensive about going to the Humane Society, partly from the guilt of being confronted by the pleading eyes of animals who had been ditched and partly from the fear of bringing home a monster.  The experience of adopting from the Humane Society opened my eyes to the fact that it wasn't a place where disfunctional animals were taken to be euthanized, but a place where caring staff spent time assessing and rehabilitating animals and re-homing them carefully.  The Humane Society as a concept conjures up differing views in people's minds, from hatred and disgust, to guilt, to relief, to respect.

My past work looked into the cracks of humanity at the mechanism that is social order -- rules and etiquette, dominance and submission, especially between the sexes.  Once I began thinking about human influence over our surroundings and our pets the new body of work fell into place.

 

BH :  I couldn’t help but feel self-conscious when viewing ‘Woebegone’, remembering my own experiences in the SPCA selecting a pet as a child. Although I didn’t mistreat an animal to the extent of these stories, I still felt guilty of ‘owning’ an animal and feeling a certain power and control over it. Do you see the mistreatment of pets as specific to certain extreme cases or as a larger problem in the relationship between humans and animals?

DH : An animal that has had it's brains bashed in by a disillusioned teenager is an acute example of the problems between animals and humans, but these problems have deep roots.  The deepest meaning in my work is the tracing of these roots to their subtle origins.  In Woebegone I chose to paint acute, undeniable cases of human cruelty to animals, as a record of what we are capable of. 

Why are we capable of such atrocities?  I don't believe there's another animal species that kills for pleasure or out of boredom, like humans do.  Part of the problem stems from human greed, greed for power, greed for convenience, greed for gratification, whatever the cost to the earth or others on it.  We have commerce and the media brainwashing us that we are ugly and useless and like sheep we spend money, lots of it, buying into our faults and the products, hoping for convenient answers.  That is a vicious circle far removed from nature.  Pets; most are bought out of vanity, impulsively, to fill holes in our souls like the latest wrinkle fading cream.  When animals require exercise, discipline and affection, things that aren't convenient or factory ready, how can the North American human cope?  Some foolishly buy flexi-leashes and rollerblades then never use them, others buy kongs and stuff them with peanut butter and talk silly-hyper-baby-talk, feeling guilty for being lazy.  Our desire for convenience creates ticking time bombs and unfulfilled animals wait around our big homes ready to go off, nip, snarl, maul.

 

BH : What do you think the treatmant of pets reveals about human nature?

DH : That humans are misguided by greed, foolishly egocentric, tempted by convenience and rarely giving towards others.

BH : I know that you researched the story behind each picture and they are almost without exception quite horrifying. Is there one story that struck you more than the others?

DH: Yes, it's Mooie.  She was a four-month old pit bull puppy, from Washington State. An unknown abuser poured acid over her, severely burning her body causing chunks of hair and skin to fall away.  A woman found the dog which had been dumped in the backyard of an elderly neighbour.  She thought the dog had been injured in a fight and tried to get help from the Animal Control people and also called a number of vet offices but was refused help.  Eventually the distraught woman brought the dog wrapped up in a towel to a vet's office.  The people at the vet's office thought the dog had been dragged by a car for a few miles, so they called 911, it being a case of animal abuse, and were told they should call Animal Control again as it wasn't a police matter.  Eventually the Animal Control people called the Fire Department who actually responded and sent a bio hazard team to the vet's office.  After 30 minutes of the dog's arrival to the vet's office three staff members started getting sick, suffering nausea, respiratory problems and headaches … you can imagine how Mooie felt.  Two of the staff had to go to the hospital. Ultimately they had to put Mooie down. 
The woman, who found Mooie and actually tried to save him, went back to her neighbourhood, canvassed the area, found out where Mooie was from and called the Police.  The police found a substance in the backyard of the owner's house which may have caused the burns (they think the acid that was used on Mooie was concentrated ammonia) but couldn't prove anything as Animal Control said the vet had washed the dog's body trying to save it, when in fact the Animal Control people decided to cremate Mooie's body two days after the crime, destroying all evidence. They also promised the vet who put Mooie down that they would perform a necropsy which they didn't.  Anyways, there was huge outcry about the bungled handling of the case, the general lack of concern by County Officials and Police.  I think there was a huge reward offered for information leading to an arrest …$50,000 I think, although I don't think the crime was ever solved.  It made headlines around the world. Here is a link for more info... and some more here...

One interesting quote from the vet who handled the case:" "I've seen animals burned, tied up by their legs, thrown up against walls so their heads were smashed, but I've never seen anything like this," said veterinarian Ivy Engstrom. "This was one of the worst things I have ever seen."

BH : Your subjects are often diminutive; babies, pets and children. In the past you have often used large canvases to paint these subjects and in ‘Woebegone’ largescale violence is told in minatures. How does scale function in ‘Woebegone’?

DH : I chose to present my human atrocities against pets in miniature for many reasons.  They were painted on discarded Victorian ivory piano keys for their faint resemblance to broken human teeth and tombstones.  (Ivory is of course a banned and controversial substance; killing elephants for their valuable tusks only is a blight on humanity.)  Interestingly I bought my keys from a man who discarded them as he thought they were dirty looking and he wanted his piano to be clean looking.   Each of the 80 paintings making up the Memento Suite in Woebegone was painstakingly created with minute brushstrokes, little pupils, hair, gashes and severed skin.  I felt that to present them in miniature, a human viewer could take a quick look and choose to see what they wanted. Many viewers got a third of the way through the show, saying things like "Oh what a cute little puppy" before cluing in that the puppy was mutilated.  Once drawn in though, I wanted the viewers to lose themselves in the animals pain and forget their own human-ness, to associate with the animals on a direct level.  Pain is a universal experience, no one likes it.  This luring in of the viewers was further done with the aid of magnifying glasses that were provided, being a tool/symbol of sleuthing and uncovering phenomenon not visible to the naked eye.

- brandon hocura

For more information visit Dana’s website : http://www.danaholst.com/