Animal Tested – an installation by MFA Student Kacie Auffret

Kacie says about her work:

My artwork takes a critical view on the human and “non­human” relationship. I examine how animals are seen as tools or resources to be used by humans and, more specifically, how
the “non­human” is used for food, clothing, or research purposes. My work seeks to draw the audience in with the subject matter through the strategic use of video installation, photographs, performance art, and printmaking. A question that I pose through the installation, Animal Tested, is, how would an eco­feminist artist address the theme of what eco­feminist Lori Gruen calls “entangled empathy”? (Strangers to nature: animal lives and human ethics) What Gruen, a philosopher and critical animal studies scholar, means is that

“[e]ntangled empathy is a process whereby individuals who are empathizing with others first respond to the other’s condition (most likely but not exclusively, by way of a pre­cognitive empathetic reaction) (Strangers to nature: animal lives and human ethics).

My goal in Animal Tested is to foster a conscious experience of entangled empathy through the installation by encouraging the viewer to acknowledge all the suffering and death of non­humans that takes place in laboratories throughout Canada. My hope is each viewer will feel compassion for the non­humans that suffered either before they entered the gallery space or once they have left.

Follow