Wim Delvoye's Tattooed Pigs

The Belgian artist Wim Delvoye is back with a gallery show in Paris featuring his (now stuffed) tattooed pigs. At the Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin on Rue de Turenne one can also watch a video about Delvoye's Art Farm in China, where the tattoos are done. It's hard to tell from the image on the left, but the pigs are tattooed with the logos of luxury goods, Disney characters, etc.

There's a good overview of the history of Delvoye's work on one of my favorite blogs, Needled.com. The proprietress of Needled, Marisa DiMattia, takes great pains to note that she didn't personally tattoo these pigs. I guess the last time she posted about Delvoye's work she was critiqued by animal activists. As she suggests, send any and all hate mail to him, not to us bloggers. You can find his website, with better images of one of his stuffed pigs (named Louise, tattooed all over with the Louis Vuitton logo) here. By the way, commercial pigs are frequently tattooed to track and manage the animals "from birth to pork." See, for example, the website of Ketchum Manufacturing, which provides a number of pig tattooing products.

I've previously posted about tattoos of pigs on people, a clearly different matter. You can find those in the archive here and here. There are a lot more out there since I last looked. I'll post about pig tattoos on chefs and other foodies later.