Guillermo Vargas Starves A Dog To Death
So I just heard about this man named Guillermo Vargas through a YouTube video. After doing some research I found out more details about an exhibition he done last year called “Eres Lo Que Lees” (translated “You Are What You Read”)
This “artist” decided to take some random dog he found on the streets, tie it up with a rope in one of the corners of his “art gallery”, and allow this animal to starve to death! Then this man had the audacity to refer to the forced suffering of this animal as “art”! He even wrote the name of this exhibition on the wall with dog food. I am sure this animal loved to smell that as he sat there and starved!
After researching dozens of other sites, articles, and blogs I have come to the conclusion that not only is this so called “artist” a sick, twisted freak but he is also a liar! Statements released by him and Juanita Bermúdez, the director of the Códice Gallery are all saying that this dog was not starved, and that he was well taken care of except for the three hours he was tied up inside the gallery.
Anyone with any amount of common sense can look at the available photos and see just how big of a lie this is! Juanita Bermúdez was even quoted saying “Natividad (the dog) was untied at all times except for the three hours the exhibition lasted, was regularly fed by the artist, and escaped after a day.” My question for all of you is: Does this look like a fed and well taken care of dog to you?
Take a good long look at how sunk in this dogs waist is and notice the scabs up and down his back bone! Look at how he is standing. It looks to me like he is barely standing at all! Why is he just gazing into the corner of the room barely able to life its head? I ask you again, does this look like a fed and well taken care of animal?
Does this picture look like “art” to you? I am absolutely baffled at the fact that a man can do this to a helpless animal and display it in a public “art gallery”.
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Tony’s View- Latest Video June 25, 2008
- Randomness April 30, 2008
- Guillermo Vargas Starves A Dog To Death April 27, 2008
eww
all i have to say is that this is the sickest video i have seen! i have a dog n i love him it makes me want to cry i no there is cruelty is this world with dogs but to be so blatant and be allowed how can this be so i think this man should be arrested no matter weva people think this is art or not its still cruelyt to animals.
The owner of the gallery and the artist should both be starved to death. The people in the background on all the pictures must all be as bad as each other. Personally if I had walked into that gallery I would have ’stolen’ the piece of art namely the ’starving dog’ and took it away. Vargas is a sick excuse for a human being. I hope he is cursed to hell.
Do u have any pix of the dog when he was first found?
I am sure all of you would have taken heroic action, as you surely do every day.
i wanna kill the sick son of a bitch who did this
it’s only a matter of time before someone put’s a bullet throu his head.,,, whit all the that about aimal right’s and stoping animal cruelty i cant beleve no action was taken that should have been stoped and he dog should have been taken care of the right way…
“I think this guy is sick! Someone should tie him up, no, put him in a glass box, so that he can’t stand up. Then heat up the room that he’s in and have a waterfall going in the corner. And if the bastard doesn’t die in a day, then gut him from head to toe. That shit isn’t art it’s the work of a disgusting piece of shit, devil, who deserves to burn in hell for that.”
This is just one of the thousands of outraged comments found across the internet directed at the artist Guillermo ‘Habacuc’ Vargas. Vargas gained global attention in 2007 when he captured an emaciated dog from the streets of San Jose, exhibited it in The Codice Gallery, Nicaragua. Tied up with no food or water he let the dog starve to death, with the title ‘Eres Lo Que Lees’ (‘You Are What You Read’) written in dog food on the wall behind the animal. The story swept across the internet as a chain email directing you to an online petition to stop the artist repeating the piece while representing Costa Rica at Bienal Centroamericana in Honduras in November of this year. The petition now holds over a two and a half million signatures. Angry blogs and Youtube videos call for Vargas to be given the same treatment as the dog and be tied to a post with no food or water. These blogs and videos feature thousands of comments, like the one above, condemning the artist as an “animal murderer” and denouncing his work as inhumane cruelty. Facebook groups have been created for incensed users to rant and rave about Vargas’ actions. These groups have hundreds of thousands of members. Vargas and the gallery have even received death threats.
The gallery later insisted that the dog, named Natividad, did not in fact starve to death but ‘was untied all the time except for the three hours the exhibition lasted and it was fed regularly with dog food Habacuc himself brought in’ and then escaped after one day. Vargas has declined to comment on the condition of the animal but says he wanted to test the public’s reaction and highlight the plight facing thousands of stray dogs in San Jose.
“Habacuc has put the guests in a position to question their own moral responsibility. Failure to act to save the dog indicates a process of rationalization on behalf of the guest, which probably considered the perceived facts of the situation: the dog was a stray set to face death anyway, it’s so far malnourished that it will be miserable regardless, it’s for the sake of art and who am I to ruin it, etc.”
Vargas’ refusal to comment on the dog’s survival has only furthered speculation about the dog’s demise and it is precisely what the artist wanted. The furore over the whole situation has become part of the artwork itself with each incensed comment and angry email adding to it’s message. Even though no one at the exhibition stepped in to help the poor dog, hundreds of thousands have felt aggrieved enough to sign the petition after reading the email or to leave a comment at the end of a blog. The artwork’s title You Are What You Read – it makes sense. To make no action when you feel things are in control but as soon as you’re told they aren’t and it’s easy to do “your bit”, everyone jumps on board.
Vargas’ work highlights people’s ability to ignore suffering and cruelty until it is presented to them out of the context of everyday life. There are tens of thousands of stray, starving dogs on the streets of San Jose and only a tiny proportion of the global population are actually trying to help them. Then as soon as one is publicly displayed, the whole world throws up their arms in outrage and jostles to get on the bandwagon. By putting the animal in an art gallery, Vargas made an example of the dog. While some people will find that cruel, the statement that he was making about cruelty was immensely resonant, sparking off this global debate. Vargas was, in fact, making an example out of us, the apathetic public. He understood, and intended, the outcry that took place, it was all part of his artwork, and while it doesn’t lessen the impact of the impassioned outbursts of those against the spectacle, it shows them in a different perspective. The comments are turned back on the commenters to expose their contradictions. The striking thing is that some people are still not backing down, in spite of the evidence presented that the dog survived and was well-looked after, and stubbornly continue to protest.
“With the unlimited access to information comes the heavy responsibility of critical thinking.”
The furious reactions to the exhibit have come from all over the world, probably further than even Vargas could have imagined. The exaggerated interest has amplified the artist’s local concerns about stray dogs on the streets of San Jose and turned them into a global discussion about animal cruelty. This would have been incapable of happening without the World Wide Web. This far-reaching technology has shrunk the world to an unimaginably small scale. Through instant messaging, Facebook statuses and online forums; news, information and gossip can be sent around the planet in a flash and can be discussed between people of cultures than would not usually have contact. The internet has become an interactive, electronic debating table where anyone can voice their opinion, intellectual or ignorant, and be heard, but with the abundance and easy availability of information, you have to be careful what you believe.
Anybody can access Wikipedia and write something, anybody can write a blog and anybody can read them. Chain emails arrive in inboxes everyday claiming that Bill Gates wants to give you money or that forwarding the email to ten more people will bring you good luck and most people delete them instantly but something about Vargas’ case was different. Even though it only takes a couple of minutes ‘googling’ the name Guillermo Vargas to find websites and weblogs that provided evidence to the contrary of the petitions and protests against Vargas’ work, millions of people didn’t take the time, when faced with the chain email, to think for themselves, do a tiny amount of research and come to an informed decision. Instead they condemn a man off the back of uninformed evidence.
The increase in audience awareness across the world has shifted the possible outcomes of work for artists such as Vargas. His exploration into the reaction that this work could cause highlights how much our communicative powers have changed over the last decade. But equally it exposes our almost unquestionable belief in the information that we know is being written behind screens. Our faith in the words written by others has come out of historical approaches to recording and writing our histories and events. But in this new age of mass un-vetted and uncontrolled communication our creative and expressive avenues must become increasingly self aware, for if you are what you read then we must be able to stand behind what we write.