Poor lil’ stem cells. They just couldn’t hold up to all the pressure of being on display at MoMA’s Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition. Victimless Leather, a small jacket made up of embryonic stem cells taken from mice, has hit the bucket. The artists, Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, told the Art Newspaper that the work which was fed nutrients by tube, expanded too quickly and clogged its own incubation system just five weeks after the show opened. Mr. Catts said his intention is “to raise questions about our exploitation of other living beings”.
Ms Antonelli says the jacket “started growing, growing, growing until it became too big. And [the artists] were back in Australia, so I had to make the decision to kill it. And you know what? I felt I could not make that decision. I’ve always been pro-choice and all of a sudden I’m here not sleeping at night about killing a coat…That thing was never alive before it was grown.”
