The exhibition "HIDDEN - Animals in the Anthropocene", initially presented at La Nau from 7 November to 3 December 2023, begins its itinerancy at the Tarongers Campus, being exhibited on the first floor of the North Lecture Hall from 8 February to 10 April 2024. This exhibition, made up of the work of eighteen photographers, addresses the problem of animal exploitation linked to industries based on the consumption of their bodies.
In addition to the poor sustainability of these practices (evident, for example, in the undeniable contribution of factory farms – especially those not subject to Best Available Techniques – to the pollution of water, soil and atmosphere, as well as to global warming), there is also the systematisation of the suffering of non-human animals, inherent in the maintenance of habits and customs that minimise operating costs.
The outcome of all this is the so-called Anthropocene, i.e. a new era marked by incessant human activity to the detriment of the planet and the environment. HIDDEN sheds light on what remains out of the public eye, on the ethical and moral costs of these practices and the gaze of those who await their fate as pieces of meat, skins for shelter, objects of entertainment or bodies to be experimented on.
Sponsored by the Friends of Thoreau Programme of the Franklin Institute and the General Foundation of the University of Alcalá (FGUA), the exhibition is the product of the work of the We Animal Media Agency, founded in 2019 by the award-winning and worldwide known Jo-Anne McArthur, leading representative of 'animal photojournalism'. Sponsored by Friends of Thoreau and the FGUA, the exhibition is complemented by a visit and lecture given by McArthur herself on 29 November 2023 at La Nau, as part of the international conference “The Factual Animal: Audiovisual Representations of Real Other-than-Human Animals”..
Organised by the research group “Culturas literarias y visuales del animal” (CULIVIAN), the event will take place at the Faculty of Language Studies, Translation and Communication of the Universitat de València from 29 November until 1 December 2023, and will count on the funding of the Valencian Department of Innovation, University, Science and Digital Society of the Valencian Government and the Departments of English and German Studies and Language Studies/ French and Italian.
Project manager: Claudia Alonso
Hidden: Animals in the antrophocene, includes the following photographers:
Project: We Animals Media
