Wesley Meuris’s work focuses on constructed and rationalised environments such as archives or enclosures for animals in zoos. Exploring both architecture and scientific systems of classification, he examines the factors that dictate how a building or structure is designed – considering factors such as hygiene, privacy, comfort and modesty. In the series of drawings of zoo animal enclosures, shown in the exhibition, we are presented with architectural typologies, devoid of their intended inhabitants. This absence leaves room for the viewer to consider to what degree these enclosures cater to the animal’s actual needs, versus our own need and desire as viewers to revel in the power of our controlling gaze and our exploitative actions that reduce animals to spectacles and sources of capital, often under the guise of care.

With support from: