Intelligent Design: Interspecies Art is a group exhibition of twenty international artists exploring human interaction with animals through a collection of provocative video installations, photographs, paintings, and sculptures.
Artists in the exhibition collaborate with cockroaches, pigeons, dogs, cats, ants, bears, baboons, rats, spiders, trout, and other species, which may be domesticated, imaginary, laboratory, modeled, or wild. Curious about the animal’s point of view, artists design their projects as a form of conversation or inquiry about the nonhuman world. Their artwork challenges the anthropocentric perspective of the world, placing human perception on par with other animals. Inspired by Darwin, the environmental movement, and species collapse, Intelligent Design envisions a paradigm shift in which human beings are no longer the center of the Universe.
The exhibition will also stimulate discussions about the differences and similarities of how the arts and sciences approach the world, animals as products, animal rights, conservation, and speciesism, as a form of prejudice against animals. Intelligent Design will be the first exhibition in the U.S. to explore interspecies art, coming on the heels of several exhibitions and conferences in the UK this year that explored the topic in light of this year’s 200-year celebration of Charles Darwin’s birth.
Organized by UCR Sweeney Art Gallery, and curated by gallery director, Tyler Stallings, and artist/independent curator, Rachel Mayeri.
