Los Animales

“Animals have disappeared from our daily life. Theyhave been moved to placesmade specially to confine them.Sometimes, we feel their presence.” Like the torch beams that cross the zoo at night, transforming the captives into supernatural apparitions, Los animales travels through the different states of a residual animal presence. The radical choice of a stylised representation of the city suggests what is going on there: an insidious dehumanisation, in which the removal of animals is probably just the prologue. With scant means (set, lighting) that reinforce this almost apocalyptic atmosphere, Paola Buontempo inverts the relationship between how animals – captive, but also stuffed or exhibited in museums – see humans and how humans see the animals they have objectified. Their fixed almost dead gaze remains mysteriously expressive – a mystery that had struck the poet Rainer Maria Rilke on seeing the panther in the Jardin du Luxembourg. There is no denunciation here, simply a powerful awakening of the unease that looking directly into the camera always produces.