Do you know where Guillermo Vargas Habacuc will be this year. I want to protest his 'work of art'.?

Question

Starving a dog to death and watching it suffer is not art at all!

Answer 1

Well, I'm not proud to say he is from Costa Rica, a small Central American country I call Home. He'll be around Honduras this year 'representing' our country in an 'art' festival. Many people here campaigned against him and even tried to convince our Ministry of Culture to cancell their economic support to him, but it has been useless. He is still going. Glad to know you are against animal cruelty too. I hope someday everybody will see what kind of monster he is for what he did and stop supporting his attrocities. But you know what sickened me most? Knowing that all those people who went to the gallery the dog died at saw it there, helpless, and nobody cared to do anything about it before it was too late.

Answer 2

There's something not quite right about this story. It was circulated via the internet without any confirmed images and certified facts from the parties involved.

Perhaps this was the reaction the artist is seeking and the dog was not mistreated. The inevitable backlash serves as a perfect marketing tool for the artist in question, generating the publicity and hype to the project.

Whatever the truth turns out to be, the issue of animal cruelty it  is supposed to represent has been highlighted to the world and hopefully it can be addressed before the hype is long forgotten.

Answer 3

Sheep...That is what you all are...Maybe at some point in your lives you can think critically before you assert facts and presume truths. The truth is there is no evidence one way or another. If you scour traditional news sources there is nothing on this story. It lives exclusively in the blogosphere. No independent pictures or videos, no sworn testimony from eyewitnesses, nothing....

So where does that leave us. Lets look at what we do know. We know there was an exhibit intending to draw attention to the plight of street dogs. It involved an apparently sick street dog named Natividad. We know at some point she was tied up, but we don't know for how long. We don't know if she was fed or not, We DON'T know if she died or not. We have conflicting claims from animal rights activists and the museum curator as to how events unfolded. The Activists say she was starved to death and the curator has a published response in which she says the animal was only tied up for 3 hours during which she was cared for and then ran away, but because of their conflicting interests we cannot accept either story as fact.

Answer 4

I wonder if Guillermo was to stand in front of a canvas and an "artist" was to pass a 308 caliber round through his head and paint said canvas with his brains, would that be art as well?

and Krystian, There are videos and still photographs of the "exhibit" proving it existed so stick that in your sheephole.

Answer 5

Could we all ask the Costa Rican Government to stop him and black list him instead of sending him to represent their country to a bienalle?

Answer 6

I don't know .....but I know some people, that know some people, that know some people, and he won't be around much longer.......if you know what I mean?!?

Answer 7

Habacuc has been selected to represent Costa Rica at the Bienal Centroamericana Honduras 2008 and an online petition has been made with over 1.8 million signatures against this selection.