Why are chicken feet appearing all over London?

By James Buxton
September 30th, 2014

Chicken feet poke out of a metal grate on the side of Smithfield market, the largest wholesale meat market in the UK and the last bastion of London’s butchers; a pig’s face stares through a window in Clerkenwell; and a flock of chickens crowd a no-entry sign on Pentonville Road: each a disturbing reminder of the way millions of animals suffer every day at the hands of the meat industry, and the work of Dan Witz, a radical artist based in New York, who has been creating provocative street art for the last four decades. 

This week I was invited to see Witz install his latest project, Empty the Cages, a guerrilla street art campaign initiated by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) designed to draw people’s attention to the millions of animals kept in horrifying conditions around the world.

Witz says: "Like most artists, I’m interested in exploring what society hides from itself. As a human, I’m concerned with injustice. But, like most people, I feel powerless to do anything about the downward spiral our planet seems to be taking."

"As someone who operates in the public commons, with my street interventions, sometimes I get the opportunity to directly address this frustration, to provoke a dialogue about issues that matter to me." 

Witz uses extreme methods to install his illegal street art interventions. Hammer drill in hand, he drills his grates into buildings, anchoring the work to the wall by hammering nails into the bricks – in broad daylight and visible to the passing public and police. Despite that, over the course of his 36-year career, he’s never been arrested. 

At times disturbing, at times darkly comic, Witz appeals to both our sense of horror and humour. By creating trompe l’oeil in the urban environment he make us question our own reality and draws our attention to the dire plight of these animals locked in cages, raised for food. 

Witz says: "It wasn’t until the anti-whistleblower ag-gag laws began passing in the United States that my attention was drawn to America’s animal agriculture industry. Further exploration revealed unbelievable depths of abuse – perpetrated against not only farm animals, but also the environment."

He believes that our taste for cheap meat is the cause of many global problems: "It’s truly unconscionable what these corporations get away with, day in and day out with seeming impunity.  If encountering my pieces brings this topic to anyone’s attention, then art matters, because life matters and I’m satisfied."

James Buxton is the editor of Global Street Art and accompanied Dan Witz when he was installing these eerie installations for PETA. If you want to see the art for yourself have a look at this interactive map of Empty the Cages.

http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/comment/articles/2014-09/30/dan-witz-street-art-chicken-feet-pig-heads