A new genre of ‘struggle’ artist exposes the denial that shrouds our appetite for meat

Catherine Price, a masters student at the Michaelis School of Fine Arts in Cape Town, uses sculpture to express concern for animals in factory farms. Working with materials like cattle hair, pig skin, chicken feathers and porcelain, she became interested in animal rights issues after she visited the Paarl abattoir in her third year of study.

“The terror of the animals in the holding pens and their futile attempts to escape, as well as the continual hosing down of the butchering area, had a huge impact on me,” she said. “Huge hoses are constantly sluicing and flushing away the blood with colossal amounts of water. It is quite beyond ordinary comprehension.” 

Catherine said she became interested in the psychological mechanisms of denial evident both in the behaviour of the abattoir staff and more generally in the meat-eating public itself.

“I decided to create a body of work in my fourth year at Michaelis in an attempt to examine these denial mechanisms in the context of the meat industry.”

Catherine started working with cattle tail hair which she obtained from a hide warehouse in Epping. “The tail hair is the only part of the animal that is discarded,” she explained. “Hair is a very evocative material. It can be both beautiful and revolting, and depending on its context, can suggest a blurring of boundaries between animals and humans in a very poignant manner.”

One of the underlying themes in Catherine’s work is that of washing.

She uses elements relating to water and washing, such as drains, washing tubs and sinks to highlight the enormous amounts of water used in the meat industry, and also in a metaphorical sense, to convey ideas relating to denial and guilt.

Catherine Price uses hair from a hide warehouse in Epping for some of her sculptures.