Faithful to its programming of major thematic and group exhibitions that promote all art forms, the FHEL invites its audiences to an incredible investigation through more than 150 works from the most prestigious collections.
The “Animal” exhibition, conceived by curator Christian Alandete, takes a cross-disciplinary, transhistorical approach to the place of the animal in artistic representations. Probably one of the earliest subjects in the history of art, the animal appears as early as cave art, and continues to play an equally important role down the centuries. The study of animality over the centuries has contributed to hierarchizing, cataloguing and distinguishing humans from animals, and among humans, the less human, by attributing animal characteristics to them. From physiognomy and its racist by-products, to mimicry and anthropomorphism, artists have contributed through their works to showing the other side of the human from a different angle, and to pointing beyond differences to what brings us together.