Artist Guillermo Vargas - Habacuc

LATELY, a number of emails have been doing the rounds, condemning the actions of the artist, Guillermo Vargas ‘Habacuc’.

Last year, the Costa Rican ‘artist’ is alleged to have paid some children to chase and catch an abandoned dog. He is said to have tied the animal by a very short rope to the wall of an art gallery in Managua and left it there for several days, without food or water, until it died.

During this time, many people visited the art gallery, paying absolutely no attention to the torment of the dying dog.

Photographs of the so-called exhibition can be found on the Internet.

The prestigious Central American Biennial exhibition incomprehensibly decided to consider this barbarous act as art, and Habacuc has been invited to repeat his cruel action at the Biennial of 2008 in Honduras.

In his defence, the artist has claimed that what he was attempting to prove was that those who saw the suffering of the dog just walked on by and that if it had been left on the street to die, no-one would have even known of its existence.

It has also been reported that the dog did not die but escaped, and that it had been fed by Vargas and was only tied up during the gallery opening times. It has not been possible to confirm this.

The Managua exhibition attracted worldwide attention and many people believe it to have been an act of cruelty rather than art. A petition has been started in an attempt to prevent Habacuc’s involvement in the 2008 Biennial and from repeating the spectacle.

If you would like to sign the petition, visit: [link]

--Google this artist to find out more about him--