An investment in the durability of the system #1

Stall dividers are used in factory farming to make production as effective, efficient and profitable as possible. Steel partitions enclose pens in which animals take up the minimum amount of space and, at the same time, experience enough comfort to maximise meat and milk production. The guilty architecture of this industry and the accompanying jargon fascinate Rafa because of her enduring interest in the power relationship between humans and animals. She constructed these sculptures out of used stall dividers, turning the perspective from horizontal to vertical in order to rid them of their function, creating metastructures within a new spatial arrangement. The work examines the principle of ‘negative space’, an architectural term denoting the empty space between objects. Stalls are designed to make the negative space around enclosures as small as possible, and to break any resistance the animals might offer. [Text by Mariaan Cousijn @EyeFilmmuseum]

Documentation view. Eye Filmmuseum, solo, 2023/24. Photo by Hans Wilschut @Eye Filmmuseum