It clearly outlines that each case will be assessed by an animal welfare inspector who assesses the living conditions and health of the animals with attention to species-specific requirements before they are allowed to be exhibited. In the United Kingdom for example, the Government Board for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs have put together a comprehensive thirty-page regulation and procedure guide last updated in 2018, which details exactly how and when animals may be used for exhibition purposes. What is often omitted in these arguments is the strict legal protection that animals have. With this mindset, it may seem like the use of animals in gallery spaces will be labelled as inherently exploitative and problematic.

Increasingly people are actively mindful about their choices and how they have a personal responsibility for the welfare of animals, not just dogs and cats, but farm animals and endangered wild fauna. The use of living animals in art, design and technological research is well-established, but the current spotlight on vegan activism has shifted the public opinion on how animals can be used and abstracted by humans. There are a few things that must be stated in order to understand the bigger picture of this debate. This article urges you to open up to the possibility that each case is dependent on context, and to have faith that artists and institutions alike are sensitive to animal welfare. Whilst I cannot promise to convince hard-line animal rights advocates that animals can be art, I can aim to showcase why the issue should not be discussed in absolutes. Who has authorial power in these situations? How does our reaction change to the ‘non-human’ when we are confronted with birds, ants, and butterflies in a gallery space? And most importantly, are activists’ efforts to inhibit the use of living animals problematic in their censorship of artistic freedom? Yet upon further reflection people’s anger seems to quell, giving voice to hitherto unanswered theoretical questions on the very nature of (bio)art. First there are ethical questions raised – isn’t this just an intellectualised form of cruelty against animals? At a time when we are seeing circuses and zoos turn away from living animal performances, one would expect the debate to be much the same in the case of art and art institutions. The immediate reaction, myself included, is one of outright rejection and horror. Interrogating the presence of living animals in art is no easy task.

Living art creatures