First I heard of the Starving Dog show was a week or so ago when I was asked to join “over a million people” in signing a petition protesting an art exhibit in Nicaragua which had taken place in August of 2007.  The petition said a Costa Rican artist named Guillermo Vargas had chained a dog to the wall in the Codice Gallery in Managua, Nicaragua and allowed it to starve to death. Apparently the performance piece was to call attention to the plight of feral dogs in Managua.

“For several  days,” continued the petition, “the ‘artist’ and the visitors of the exhibition watched emotionless the shameful ‘masterpiece’ based on the dog’s agony, until  eventually he died.” The petition went on to say “the reports about the exhibition have sparked international outrage.  Websites, blogs, and petitions were devoted to protesting the exhibit.”

 I was Intrigued by the similarity of this report to to the ‘Death as Art’, performance piece I wrote about in my post “Ars Moriendi” on May 6. A German artist , Gregor Schneider, proposed exhibiting a dying person in a gallery or museum until the end came. There was no mention of the dying person’s last meal or lack of same. Another difference surfaced immediately: Schneider’s performance piece was a proposal that presumably will never take place after causing an uproar of its own while Vargas’ idea was actually carried out. Or was it?

 

 Daido Moriyama: Stray Dog, Misawa, 1971

 

It seems that as usual reality is stranger than fiction. Guillermo Vargas. a.k.a. Guillermo Vargas Jiménez, a.k.a Habacuc ( I think I will go with Habacuc as that’s easiest to type) In addition to honoring the feral dogs of Managua also decided to commemorate the memory of Natividad Canada, a 24-year-old Nicaraguan who died in a Costa Rican factory after being attacked by two Rottweiler dogs in 2005. Accordingly, Habacuc named the dog Natividad and in addition to chaining Natividad to the gallery wall, added a few other flourishes as well:

 He made a caption out of dog biscuits: “Ero Lo Que Lees” (You Are What You read) and feeling that was somehow inadequate decided to play the Sandinista  anthem backwards in addition to denying Natividad water and food. Apparently deciding he hadn’t really made his point, he also burned “175 pieces of crack cocaine in a massive incense burner” or so reported Gerard Couzens in the March 30th edition of London’s Sunday paper, The Observer.

Personally I find it hard to imagine the gallery-goers being “emotionless” after being compared to dog biscuits and being surrounded by clouds of burning cocaine as they watched an emaciated dog in his last agonies accompanied by a backward version of “Fight against the Yanqui, the enemy of mankind” 

But it turns out Natividad didn’t die after all, and though he was deprived of food and water during the time of the of performance – three hours a day for three days -  he was fed and watered by artist Habacuc while resting between performances.

Or so maintains Gallery owner Jaunita Bermudez, director of the Codice Gallery. She went on to add that Natividad had escaped on the fourth day when inadvertently released by a night watchman.

 

 

Mr. Woolford and Princess Nu-Nu at Home 

Click to enlarge

 Cruel and inhumane treatment of an animal? Well, I don’t know. My own dogs often go for three hours without food or water but of course they have the choice of plodding a few feet to get water and they’re fed twice a day. But if I endlessly serenaded my little pugs with the Sandinista anthem played backwards the PETA van might well be pulling up to my front door especially after they got a whiff of the burning crack. I would think that if you really wanted to help the street dogs of Managua, you’d raise funds to provide the homeless canines a shelter and food instead of carrying on with nonsensical displays. 

We can only imagine Natividad’s relief when he rejoined his friends on the streets of Managua. I also imagine the homeless dogs will be equally relieved once Habacuc moves on to other causes.