Faculty of Art

Printmaking & Publications

Brandon Latcham

Look Inside Yourself

Mechanical pig with spinning bronze element

“Metal casting and metallurgy are synonymous with alchemy. Creating this pig, I was thinking about the story of Faust and what we give up in gaining knowledge. An adaptation by Jan Švankmajer was my introduction to this tale. Švankmajer’s uses the car as a motif For Capitalism. The car represents the uncaring ideology that replaces Communism in his country. Both political frameworks he is critical of. With capitalism, social mobility is allowed by buying into harmful mechanisms. They are umbrellaed under indifference. Inside the pig's eviscerated stomach is an entangled cluster of rats known as a rat king. An alleged natural phenomenon occurs from the tail becoming tangled in the mire of their secretions. We react to this sculpture by buying into this system which activate the rats. The viewer is motivated to acknowledge their entanglement within systems of power.”