The Planet of the pigs
Astronaut Colonel George Taylor and his crew, in the movie "Planet of the Apes" by Franklin J. Schaffner - adaptation of the homonymous novel by Pierre Boulle - did not expect that the inhabitants of this inhospitable and almost deserted planet could manifest greater intelligence than that of humans.
They could not imagine that after their departure in 1974 and 18 months of space mission, they would arrive in the year 3978 on a planet dominated by a superior race of monkeys eager to capture them and use them as laboratory guinea pigs.
In Boulle's novel, the planet Soror, which they observe from their spaceship, is inhabited by humans living in the wild... Could they be the monkeys in the film adaptation?
The inversion of roles between humans and animals is a constant in science fiction and cinematographic imagery, but also in literature, as evidenced by George Orwell's satirical novel "Animal Farm" (1945), in which Stalinists pigs, in their quest for equality and autonomy, only reproduce the same characteristic vices of human societies, using manipulation and corruption in order to establish their domination over other animals.
The two fables address the same themes of the anguish of man deprived of his freedom and dignity, the fear of the other, the vices of power...
"Somewhere in the universe there must be something better than man"...
The project revolves around these concepts and combines a large “model” entitled “Porn City”, photographs, videos and installation.
All the works, some of which have already been produced in an artistic residency in Joya: Air, Almería, aim to situate the viewer in a world where the boundaries between human and animal remain blurred and where the "savagery" of the human condition shows through.
Porn City
Felt and ceramic pigs
60 x 370 x 370 cm
In Progress
The representation of the city turns towards a new production with “Porn City”, a complex work due to the diversity of layers and references it contains. While in the different versions of "State of siege" urban formations are threatened by a horde of plastic animals, in this case animals have replaced humans in a fantasy world. With this twist, Rey represents the inversion of the relationship of the human / animal domination that appears in numerous fables and narratives, such as Planet of the Apes (1963), and pushes us to reflect on the limits of human development models. The piece consists of a fragment of a 'soft' city made of pink felt that, like Pinocchio's toy island, has the appearance of a big candy. In this case, however, instead of children turned into donkeys, the city is populated by dozens of little pigs which adopt the model of mass-produced ceramic piggy banks - obviously related to money and passions or capital sins such as gluttony. It is complemented, in the autobiographical framework that underlies all of her work, by a strip of passport photographs with the artist wearing a pig headband. For Rey, this imaginary would be “the result of a 'collision' (improbable) of Orwell's novel Animal Farm (1945) and a rather bad documentary about Big Major’s uninhabited island, in the Bahamas, where about twenty pigs live, which have become a tourist attraction”. The artist translates Orwell's Stalinist pigs into the 21st century, and turns them into sympathetic capitalist pigs, which at the same time are the protagonists of “a satiated and sick society, victims of her own system”, she says. But as in Orwell's novel, the victims become executioners. Rey also observes these transmutations with Big Major’s pigs, where she notices a reversal of roles according to the capitalist strategy, which deliberately alters nature (in this case by introducing pigs) to obtain benefits (tourist exploitation, which consists of feeding animals after using and eating them).


In progress
Animal Farm series
Print on paper
45 x 60 cm
2021

Print on paper 45 x 60 cm 2021

Print on paper 45 x 60 cm 2021

18 Polaroid as a Piggy
24 x 67 cm
2021
The Planet of the pigs series 1
Direct print on aluminum Dibond
89 x 50 cm
2022









The Planet of the pigs series 2
Print on paper or vinyl
Variable dimensions
2022



