Tattooing Pigs By Wim Delvoye

Delvoye is perhaps best known for his digestive machine, “Cloaca”, which he unveiled at the Museum voor Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp, after eight years of consultation with experts in fields ranging from plumbing to gastroenterology. In a comment on the Belgians’ love of fine dining, “Cloaca” is a large installation that turns food into feces, allowing Delvoye to explore the digestive process. The food begins at a long, transparent mouth, travels through a number of machine-like assembly stations, and ends in hard matter which is separated from liquid through a cylinder. Delvoye collects and sells the realistically smelling output, suspended in small jars of resin at his Ghent studio. When asked about his inspiration, Delvoye stated that everything in modern life is pointless. The most useless object he could create was a machine that serves no purpose at all, besides the reduction of food to waste. "Cloaca" has appeared in many incarnations including: "Cloaca Original", "Cloaca - New & Improved", "Cloaca Turbo", "Cloaca Quattro", "Cloaca N° 5", and "Personal Cloaca".
Though Delvoye started tattooing pig skins taken from slaughterhouses in the United States in 1992, he began to tattoo live pigs in 1997. Delvoye was interested in the idea that “the pig would literally grow in value," both in a physical and economic sense. He ultimately moved the operation to an Art Farm in China in 2004 where restrictions regarding animal welfare were less strict. The pigs have been inked with a diverse array of designs, including the trival, such as sculls and crosses, to Louis Vuitton designs, to designs dictated by the pig's anatomy. The designs are created by Delvoye and his three colleagues in residence." In an interview with ArtAsiaPacific's Paul Laster, Delvoye described the process of tattooing a live pig,"we sedate it, shave it and apply Vaseline to its skin."" As another manifestation of contradiction in Delvoye’s art, he owns a pig farm though he is a practicing vegetarian.