Here are lions
by Jan Locus
portfolio shortlisted call 'URBANAUTICA INSTITUTE AWARDS 2020', 2020
Category: Nature, Environment and Perspectives
For millennia, humans have hunted wild animals, usurping their habitats and domesticated certain species for the purposes of providing food or labor. After centuries of industrialization wild animals have been removed from our daily lives. Three decades ago, John Berger declared modes of looking at animals in zoo displays to be “compensatory,” reflecting how marginalized animal lives have become in late capitalist societies. The displayed animals in zoos and museum dioramas are real, but their surroundings reveal the fundamentally mediated and constructed nature of these very un-natural spaces. Locations: Glasgow Zoo, Belfast Zoo, Havana Zoo, Bronx Zoo, Seattle Zoo, Bogd Khan Palace Museum Ulaanbaatar, Mali Zoo, London Zoo and Cairo Zoo. The title is derived from the classical phrase used by ancient Roman and Medieval cartographers ‘Hic Svnt Leones’ when denoting unknown territories on maps.