Something fishy about death row (Friday 12 September 2008)
A death-row convict will be chopped up and used as fish food, should his third appeal against sentencing fail. Gene Hathorn is awaiting execution, having been convicted of the triple murder of his father, step-mother and step-brother in 1985 . Now, in an effort to appeal to the public, the inmate has agreed to donate his remains to artist Marco Evaristti . As part of a new installation, the Chilean-born artist will freeze and chop the body, before inviting spectators to feed it to a tank of fish. The interactive work, to be shown at an undisclosed German venue, is designed to provoke a debate about capital punishment. "I wanted to raise awareness of the fact that there are people killed legally in our Western civilisation" Evaristti commented.
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Evaristti: The Last Fashion Show; image held here |
t is not the first time that the artist has covered the theme of what he terms "state-sponsored homicide'. Another venture was The Last Fashion Show, with models exhibiting execution day-wear.
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| Evaristti's 'execution bed'; image held here |
This month, the artist's design for an execution bed will be premiered at the at the Art Copenhagen fair.
Hathorn's case resonates deeply with the artist, incited by the court's desciption of the criminal as "human trash." He met the convict while researching long-term inmates and has helped to raise over $125,000 for the convict's campaign. According to the artist, vital details surrounding Hathorn's case were simply omitted from court proceedings. The allegation that Hathorn was abused by his father, supposedly a member of Ku Klux Klan, was never addressed by the bench. Also, although Hathorn testified against his friend James Beathard, he later recanted the evidence. Due to a legal technicality, the new evidence didn't stand and his friend, still pleading innocence, was executed by lethal injection.
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| Marco Evaristti: Ice cube project ; image held here |
Evaristti does not see the ethical implications of using a human body, pointing out, "Normally the inmates donate their bodies to science experiments, and this is kind of an art experiment." It is an attitude shared by the Texan Department of Criminal Justice, which asserts that, while requiring that criminals choose a party to carry out their deposition, it has no interest whatsover in who that person might be.
The artist may be no stranger to controversy, but he's also familiar with fish. In 2000, he placed goldfish into ten elecric blenders, before inviting visitors to the exhibition at Denmark's Trapholt Art Museum to switch them on (police later removed the work). Previous projects include spray-painting an ice-berg red, attempting to paint Mont Blanc and serving meatballs made from his own fat.
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