(photo from aidoh.dk website.)
Yowza! Talk about a stunning surprise!
I was searching the web for nominees for my “ugliest statue” list today and ran across a site for “My Inner Beast”.
This, it seems, was an art happening in orchestrated 1993 by the Danish sculptor Jens Galschiøt Christophersen. In one night, twenty concrete sculptures of an evil looking pig in an overcoat were raised unauthorized and anonymously. The plaques on their bases all said the same thing. The swine were meant to call attention to Europe’s rising racism and intolerance and the inner beast in everyone that was the ultimate threat to the promise of a new Europe.
Seems this Galschiot was once a locksmith in a shipyard, but taught himself sculpture and has been at it as more than artistic medium. It’s also his method of activism and to this end, he’s established AIDOH (Art in Defense of Humanism) which seeks to raise the world’s consciousness of social and political wrongs through art.
But back to the pig. They were all located at significant sites, like the Place de la Bastille in Paris and the UN building in Geneva.
Some cities, like Paris, dumped it as soon as possible and more than one ended up in a “Lost Properties” office. Geneva’s “disappeared”. Milan hauled theirs away and checked it for bombs. Spokespeople there said they felt it was a typically “German” thing to do.
Copenhagen and Bonn both found permanent homes for theirs, and Innsbruck, Austria thanked the artist once he’d been revealed and gave it a place of honor. Munich gave theirs to a woman who collects “pigs of all kinds” and has it in her garden.
Antwerp Belgium declared they didn’t participate in the happening, though there are pix of locals inspecting the pig.
In 2002, after one of the pigs showed up at an art auction and was sold for 35,000 Euros, Galschiot began an information service and a documentary was being made about the fate of the pigs which were created to make people think about their inhumanity to others.
There are videos on the web at the aidoh.dk website.
10:24:32 PM 
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