These are three paintings from the painting series Fire from the Sun (2017) by Michaël Borremans. Fire from The Sun depicts racially white, cherubic children plating with fire, human limbs, and hair, and covered in blood. Despite the gory scene, the children are undisturbed. Looking at them as a series, one may notice the backdrop to be, not just a wash of beige, but a stage curtain. What are we watching? Is someone directing these children? Where did these limbs come from? 

These paintings were faced with mixed reviews, largely due to the subject focusing on naked, bloody, potentially cannibalistic babies, including criticisms calling the work pedophilic. What do you think? Is art free from certain social standards? How does the medium of painting help or hurt?

About the Artist

Michaël Borremans (b. 1963) is a Belgian painter whos work most closely resembles 18th century painting and the legacies of Spanish artists Goya and Velázquez. His works are all deeply uncanny, engaging with problematic legacies of racism, religious extremism, and human disturbances. 

This is a self-portrait photograph by He Chengyao titled 99 Needles (2002). This piece was meant to recreate the feeling her mother felt when forced into painful acupuncture treatments for her mental illness. For the work, He inserted 99 acupuncture needed into her body.

She dedicated the piece to her mother, performing it as an act of atonement for being unable to help her when she was in pain.

About the Artist

He Chengyao (b. 1964) is a Chinese artist who explores identity as it unfolds through her complicated relationship with her mother. Her work often incorporates themes of nudity, mental illness, and memory. She works primarily in photo, video, and performance art. Works like Mama and Me were a form of catharsis of He, for things that she has moved and healed from, with help from her work. 

These are three of Wim Delvoye’s tattooed pigs, Donata (2005), Koi (2008), and Jesus (2005). These are the most controversial work featured in this project. They are pigs that, after passing away, are stuffed or sometimes skinned before entering private or museum collections. However, their tattoos were done while they were alive. Artist Delvoye insists that it was done humanely with sedatives, however many people still find the works, more than disturbing, but morally perverse.

I decided to feature these because they bring up a very particular question for me around eating meat and the farm industry. These pigs are reared to be art once they die, in the way that other pigs are reared to be food. As someone who eats meat, what about this work disturbs me so much? These pigs, after being tattooed, live lives closer to those as pets. Collectors must wait until the pig has passed away naturally before physically possessing them. Is it because we understand food to be a necessity and art to be superfluous?

About the Artist

Wim Delvoye (b. 1965) is a Belgian conceptual artist whose work is often considered shocking but philosophical. He ended up moving to China in 2004 as it was the only country that would allow him to continue tattooing his pigs. He was interested in seeing how far people would go to own something seen as distasteful.