While, as human beings, we are bound to never fully transcend our human-centered perspective, art offers a means to glimpse beyond our own biases and limitations, imagining a world where animals and humans interact on equal terms.<\/span><\/h5>\n

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Naima Morelli<\/span><\/h4>\n

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Pescara, Italy, 1975. It was the opening of Gino De Dominicis\u2019 latest show at Lucrezia De Domizio\u2019s gallery, yet visitors were barred from entering. As art enthusiasts clustered around the entrance, their curiosity was heightened by sounds and glimpses of movement. Peering inside, they saw unexpected forms \u2014 first a goose, then a donkey, an ox, some hens. This unusual gathering of animals was central to a work that excluded human spectators entirely.<\/span><\/p>\n

Titled <\/span>Exhibition for Animals Only<\/span><\/i>, the show was dedicated to a non-human audience, animals observing each other, humans kept outside. The concept fit neatly within De Dominicis\u2019 ongoing meditation on death, a recurring motif in his work, and here reflected the artist\u2019s perspective on animals as beings blissfully unaware of mortality.<\/span><\/p>\n

Through the exclusion of human visitors, De Dominicis also made a statement about the nature of art itself, posing the question: does art need human spectatorship to be art? The work was meant to subvert expectations and reframe the gallery as a space not simply dedicated to an aesthetic experience, but rather apt to rethinking the boundaries of perception and purpose of art itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

The irony and sense of absurd in De Dominicis\u2019 work taps into a longstanding artistic fascination with animals, particularly in contemporary art. Animals have served artists as allegorical or symbolic figures for centuries, often representing various aspects of human nature as both noble and flawed.\u00a0 However, in most representations, animals are seen through an anthropomorphic lens, reduced to metaphors for human characteristics. They are rarely seen simply as themselves, and in gallery settings, they are often reduced to props, mere objects in the spectacle of human spectatorship. In other words, the gallery as a zoo.<\/span><\/p>\n

As De Dominicis\u2019 show reminds us, this treatment of animals raises questions not only about art but about the ethics and power dynamics in the human-animal relationship itself. Where do animals stand in this equation \u2014 are they symbols, actors, or something altogether different? And what does it say about humanity that animals are so often pulled into these human-centered artistic conversations, silent witnesses to our own struggles and contradictions?<\/span><\/p>\n

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Khaled Hafez, \"Seated Goddess on White,\" 2009 (images courtesy of the artist).<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Khaled Hafez<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Khaled Hafez, \"Codes of Hermes: Chapter 2, Living by the Secret.\"<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Khaled Hafez: Human-Animal Dichotomy<\/h4>\n

Take <\/span>Egyptian artist Khaled Hafez for example<\/span><\/a>. In his canvases, animals are potent symbols, specifically of human behaviors, drawn from a unique intersection of myth and modernity. In his work, animals function not as passive props but as lively embodiments of the many cultural and social contradictions that shape contemporary Egyptian life.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Hafez explores this human-animal dichotomy through a range of overlapping tensions: Middle Eastern versus Western cultures, sacred versus commercial, and, crucially, male versus female. Hafez\u2019s visual language draws from both ancient Egyptian gods \u2014 divine beings who often possessed animal traits \u2014 and contemporary superheroes, whose powers frequently originate from connections to animals, like a spider or bat.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The god and the superhero possess a duality, both embodying human and animal traits. Through these figures, Hafez\u2019s work suggests a symbolic fusion, where these dichotomies don\u2019t cancel each other out but rather combine in complex, singular forms.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rendered in scroll-like or pixelated compositions, Hafez\u2019s paintings mix elements from media and advertising with the aesthetics of ancient Egyptian art. He reinterprets familiar images, overlaying them with cultural archetypes, creating a space where past and present intermingle.<\/span><\/p>\n

Goddesses often appear as symbols of female supremacy in his works, positioned against smaller male figures, challenging Egypt\u2019s prevalent sexism. This placement of figures carries an implicit critique of dominant gender biases in Egyptian society, questioning longstanding cultural roles.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Hafez\u2019s depictions of animals, particularly bulls, cows, and horses, embody a specific political symbolism. In works created before the January 25 Revolution, animals and human figures \u2014 military and civilian \u2014 share the same space in scenes charged with tension. Once again, in a series of paintings, animals reflect not only human characteristics but also the inherent contradictions of societal conflict, as if they too are embroiled in the intense, fractured political landscape.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Wael Shawky, \"Cabaret Crusades,\" 2015 (courtesy MoMA).<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Wael Shawky, \"Cabaret Crusades,\" 2015 (courtesy Sfeir-Semler Gallery).<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Wael Shawky, exhibition Lia Rumma, Naples.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Wael Shawky, exhibition Lia Rumma, Naples.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Wael Shawky: Political Symbols<\/h4>\n

Wael Shawky, another prominent Egyptian artist who represented his country at the Venice Biennale this year, approaches the use of animals with even more overt political lens, though his work maintains a similar tension between history and myth to Hafez. His 45-minute video “Drama 1882” was described as “mesmerizing” by a New York Times<\/a> art critic observing visitors to the Biennale’s Egyptian Pavilion.<\/span><\/p>\n

Shawky\u2019s <\/span>Cabaret Crusades<\/span><\/i> series<\/span><\/a> is a three-part adaptation of Amin Maalouf\u2019s historical study <\/span>The Crusades through Arab Eyes<\/span><\/i> (1984). In the work the artist reimagined the events of the Crusades, using puppet figures to depict the conflicts in ways that challenge traditional western narratives.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Shawky\u2019s hands, the Crusades unfold through 110 marionettes with animalistic qualities, distancing the viewer from human characters and thus allowing a more detached reflection on historical events. Also for Shawky, like for Hafez, animal figures symbolize the blending of Eastern and Western identities, a cultural hybridity that goes beyond mere physical appearance. In Shawky\u2019s hands, these figures take on an almost relic-like quality, reminiscent of ancient bestiaries cataloging the \u201cOther\u201d as a way of defining the self.<\/span><\/p>\n

By turning to animals instead of humans, Shawky asks viewers to consider how cultures construct and distort the enemy \u201cother\u201d in the telling of history, an observation with significant implications for understanding modern East-West relations. <\/span>For his solo at Lia Rumma Gallery in Naples in 2018<\/span><\/a>, the artist explained to curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev how animals are connected to the land in his work: “Drawing is never something I can foresee. It can become an animal connected to a city, for example. What I want from the work is that in the end it is sufficiently precise in its details that one could no longer criticize the individual parts, because it seems to really exist, somewhere. The landscape, the shape is there, a four-legged animal.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Through the different mediums which compose the varying episodes of <\/span>Cabaret Crusades, <\/span><\/i>Shawky suggests that history is a shifting, complex narrative constructed through both myth and conflict, in which animals become messengers between worlds.<\/span><\/p>\n