Squealing like a Pig

Excerpt:

There is a consensus, in many cultures, that being called a “pig” is an insult. The pig has held many contradictory positions across the globe since Roman times. In Heji Shin’s THE BIG NUDES, showcasing large black-and-white and color portraits of young pigs, it is immediately obvious that the animals are utterly clean, though it would be misleading to suggest the artist’s goal was to redeem the status of the hog. Shin’s artistic endeavor in photographing animals has mainly been an effort to avoid the communal discourse around a certain species—its symbolism and meaning—in order to focus on the possibility of its use for other means, for both self-deprecating and provocative reasons. 

As the title shows, Shin takes the 1981 exhibition and publication of Helmut Newton’s Big Nudes as her point of departure for this project. One could say these artists have much in common: they are both German and both came to the United States to work; they are both photographers in the fashion industry, yet they do not draw a clear line between their commercial work and their artistic practices. Both intertwine these activities—not only does one finance the other, but each in turn nurtures the other formally and conceptually.

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