Ningjing Chen
陈 宁 静
How To Kill An Elephant
mixed media
March 2019
This artwork was inspired by the news that “elephants see human as cuddly creatures, just as humans see dogs as lovely animals”. Yet I have frequently witnessed news and photographs of humans brutally cutting off half the heads of elephants in order to get their tusks. It strikes me as ironic that the lovely creatures that elephants see are actually the ones that are driving them to extinction. Not only elephants but also countless animals will disappear from the earth because of human greed. Some people might say that we have set up nature reserves and we have devoted our financial and material resources to protecting wild animals, but I have always believed that animals do not need to be protected without human greed.
How to kill an elephant is created based on these considerations. It took me a month to make an elephant, but only a few minutes to destroy it. When I decided to cut off its head, it was as if a real elephant had collapsed down in front of us. We all called the elephant as Chubby elephant because my original inspiration was to make it as cute as a child’s toy and then painted it with bright colours, in the purpose of using a cute thing to express a cruel issue, the contrast formed by which is to make people more impressed. Finally, I recorded the whole process of the slaughtering, including the remains of elephants, which is the complete collection of my work as well as my expression and thinking on this issue.
