Chunks of meat hanging from a conveyor belt in a slaughterhouse are projected in slow motion across a white screen. And photographs of meat plotted on fabric hanging from a clothes’ stand that is referred to in Brazil as a macaw’s perch (pau de arara). The term is however also used to describe a common method of torture during the military dictatorship. Exhibition visitors are invited to choose a photograph as a background for selfies. Some people said that the sight of the grilled meat made their mouths water. A lamp similar to those used both in photo studios and in forced interrogation projects the shadows of the visitors onto a white wall.
In Eugène Ionesco’s play, Rhinoceros, Daisy regrets that her friend has turned into a rhinoceros and recounts: “What he said was: we must move with the times! Those were his last human words.” A reflection on how fascism and national socialism assume their own reality, void of humanity. This phrase is seen in Ottjörg’s etching Imagine there is no Rhino (2015), which is seen hanging on another wall.
Outside, on the public monuments in front of the museum, fragments of testicles and horsehair from castrated stallions point out that violence is inherent to the flip side of culture.