Sculptural Installation "Grüße die Hühner" ["Greetings to the Chickens"] - 9th Swiss Triennial of Sculptures in Bad Ragaz, 2024

Their beauty, laying performance and meat are so popular that chickens are kept as farm animals all over the world. The domesticated animal once spread from Asia to Europe. A chicken does not need much. This is how humans have now degraded this species to a successful, efficient "turbo chicken" and economic product. According to Focus magazine, around 23 billion chickens worldwide lay around 1.2 trillion eggs per year and global chicken meat consumption is over 100 million tons.

For the Swiss Sculptural Triennial Bad RagARTz, conceptual artist Ottmar Hörl creates a large-format chicken sculpture. The motif was the topic of his installation "The chicken that lays golden eggs should not be slaughtered" in 2007. The phrase is a reference to Jean de La Fontaine's famous fable. The larger-than-life pair of chickens, and in particular the decision to use the unusual colour purple, symbolizes the change, the shift towards a banal, distanced view of humanity's treatment of living creatures through pragmatic, intensive farming. Thus, Ottmar Hörl's serial, purple-coloured work of art is a monument to the chicken as a representative of all farm animals.

Text: Eva Schickler M.A.

To the organizer's website