Berenice Olmedo Peña (MX)

There are 24 million dogs in Mexico, of which 16.8 million (70%) are stray dogs.

The way dogs are dealt with in Mexico is extremely contradictory: on the one hand there are official security regulations that consider the dog a dangerous animal and a health hazard; on the other hand the Federal Civil Code refers to the dog as a “good”, as an object or thing. Starting from this legal paradox, the artist began collecting canine corpses that had been run over and left behind, and then she started making various products from their remains. The dogs were skinned and their fur tanned to make textiles. Soap was made from the body fat extracted in a chemical lab.

With this elaborate procedure Berenice Olmedo Peña critically questions our relationship to the canine species: on the one hand the cultivated domestic animal, “man’s best friend”, on the other hand the little appreciated, disrespectfully treated stray dog.