showcase your art to thousands
of visitors every day

TINKEBELL. For some time already TINKEBELL. has been exploring the notion of empathy as it relates to the ambiguous morality manifested by animal and environmental activists. In doing so, she uses their highly populistic methods, for example by liberating animals and ‘branding’ the so-called executioners. At the moment she is working on a series of studies entitled Supercalifragilisticexpialido-cious (2007, fig. 10). The first work in this series involves a group of animals in transparent plastic run-about balls which she hopes to release in exhibition halls or public areas. She employs the often naïve ideas regarding the concept of ‘freedom’ which people – activists – have towards the animal world, and combines this with a systematised form of consumption of animals as a form of entertainment, as presented by animal industries and suchlike. In other words, her work is never about the animals themselves, but about the manner in which people, with their emotions and the (dubious) moral values connected to them, interpret their percep-tion of the concepts of ‘nature’ and ‘freedom’: putting house pets in plastic run-about balls is primarily intended to give the consumer the feeling that his or her pet is in a pleasant, free position, without posing any further nuisance by destroying and/or soiling furniture, etc. The same of course holds for liberating lab mice or other types of animals in captivity, given the fact that the vast majority of such creatures would quickly perish in their ‘natural’
environment. The question as to whether such an environment even exists plays an important role in this: liberating the animals involves an illustration of an ideal – from a construction of moral human concepts – in which the animals – both in captivity as when liberated – are the victims in all cases. In this way TINKEBELL. uses the powerless and unwitting animal world as a mirror, a source of reflection for the human struggle with concepts such as good and bad, in which questions concerning ‘naturalness’ and ‘originality’ and the human need to unconsciously (?) control these go hand in hand. The extensive attention her project Pinkeltje (2004-2005, fig. 7) received from activists and the media demonstrates that this approach certainly meets with its share of resistance. In this project, she killed her cat with own hands and then had it stuffed and made into a hand bag as a product for consumption, thereby directly bridging the gap between house pet and animal for consumption/production and thus painfully bringing the matter to light. A collection of the threats generated by this and other projects is currently being worked on.

Dikkie dik

2005
stuffed cat skin
+/- 50x50x50 cm

Tommie

2006
stuffed guineapig
+/- 30x20x20

Pimmetje

2006
+/- 60x30x30

Fifi

2006
+/- 40x40x30

My dearest cat

2004
+/- 30x30x20

ALMOST 18+ (1)

2005
pint+embroydery+div. paint on canvas
+/- 30x90 cm

ALMOST 18+ (3)

2005
print, embroidery, div. paint on canvas
100x100cm

ALMOST 18+

2006
30x30 cm

Brutus

2007
danish dog
c.a. 180x100