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(B)eat it?

(B)eat it?
Photo: © Hartmut Kiewert

Harmut Kiewert has one theme: the human-animal relationship in today's world. The artist illuminates it from many angles and makes a clear statement with his art. He eats, lives and paints vegan - that is his philosophy of life. A deeper look into an artist with a vision.
 

Text Boris Messing    

 

There are three reasons for becoming a vegan: for health, for the sake of the environment, or for animal welfare. Harmut Kiewert, as can be concluded from his pictures, is primarily interested in the latter. A sleeping calf that is already half salami; small piglets sucking on a sausage with teats; a ham that looks like a Sacher cake - these are just a few of the macabre images in his "Schlachtplatten" series. With sarcastic humor, Hartmut Kiewert addresses the unpleasant aspects of eating meat. From the slaughterhouse to the ribs and intestines, he relentlessly shows what it means to eat meat. 

Hartmut Kiewert has been dealing with the human-animal relationship in his art for almost two decades. The artist does not just leave it at pictures and symbolism. He is vegan and paints exclusively vegan. Brushes, paint, canvas - none of his materials contain animal products; on his homepage he explains in detail his painting technique and what he uses for it. Kiewert is inspired by different styles. Images of Manet, Goya or Francis Bacon come to mind. His works are stylistically reminiscent of realism and early impressionism - with irony and a sometimes surreal touch.



 

In his pictures, Kiewert not only shows the ugly side of the human-animal relationship. He also imagines a different, idyllic world, for example in his latest series of paintings "Animal Utopia". Peacefully they sit together - pigs, cows, chickens, humans - and enjoy their presence. The animals have escaped the slaughterhouses, the industrial plants have crumbled to ruins, the streets have been cleared of cars and conquered by the animal world. It is a utopia in which there is no suffering and no inequalities. Kiewert is often concerned with these inequalities. He wants, he says, not only to show the "cruelty of the animal industry" with his pictures, but also to try to develop a "positive counter-narrative" in which humans and animals live together in harmony. He calls this utopia "overcoming anthropocentrism".

For centuries, meat was considered a sign of prosperity. Anyone who had more meat on their plate was better off. Meat was a luxury good, an elixir of life. And that's still the case today in many parts of the world. The fact that meat has become so cheap in Germany and Europe naturally has something to do with factory farming, which Kiewert denounces. The cruel conditions under which animals are kept, which are publicized time and time again, are all too easily ignored when you take a bite of your steak, and no thought is given to the impact on the environment and the climate anyway. Too abstract, too far away - and damn it, the schnitzel just tastes good. Nevertheless, every now and then you should let the other figures melt on your tongue; they, admittedly, don't taste as good. In 2019 alone, 763 million animals lived and died in factory farming. In 2020, meat consumption per capita in Germany was 57.3 kilograms (for comparison: in 2000, it was 61.5 kilograms). And even though meat consumption has been trending downward for a few years, on the whole it remains pretty high. 57 kilograms, that's the equivalent of a 160-gram steak - every day!



In addition to animal welfare, the environmental impact of factory farming also plays a role in Kiewert's art. Here, too, there are reliable figures. According to the Federal Environment Agency, agriculture in Germany is a major contributor to the emission of climate-damaging gases. This relates in particular to methane and nitrous oxide emissions as a result of nitrogen fertilization. In 2020, German agriculture was estimated to be responsible for a total of 60.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents, which corresponds to 8.2 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in that year. However, the pressures on the environment do not only affect the climate. Factory farming consumes many resources, especially water, and takes up land that could be used in other ways. The fattening of pigs, cattle and poultry requires a lot of arable land for feed, especially for cattle farming. More than half of the land used for agriculture in Germany is needed for feed for farm animals.

Kiewert himself did not become a vegan overnight. The artist, who was born in Koblenz in 1980, already found it terrible as a child "that people eat animals". He was always told that eating meat was "normal, natural, necessary". This is nonsense, of course. Countless studies have shown that too much meat consumption is detrimental to health. Who wants to get a picture of these studies, can read them up summarized in the standard work 'Vegan cliché Ade!' of the nourishing scientist Niko Rittenau. The decisive turning point in Kiewert's own life was the BSE crisis in 2000. He first decided to go vegetarian and has been pursuing a consistent vegan lifestyle since 2008, which is not limited to nutrition but includes the consumption of exclusively vegan products.



With his art, he hits the bull eye. Although veganism is still a marginal phenomenon in Germany, more and more people are thinking about their relationship to animals and the environment. Kiewert also notices this in an increasing reception of his art. He has regular exhibitions and galleries in Essen, Frankfurt a.M., Berlin and Marburg. In Berlin, he exhibited at Tom Albrecht's "Gallery for Sustainable Art," among others.

Kiewert does not rule out turning to other sociopolitical issues. During his art studies at the Burg Giebichenstein at the University of Halle, he became involved in various movements such as the environmental or anti-nuclear movements. He was also intensively involved with critical social theory and anarchism. The idea to deal artistically with the human-animal relationship was a "conscious decision" in order to, as he says, "renegotiate it with the means of painting". In any case, his art brings something on the table - no meat though.


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