Sanne Lovén Rolén

My work explores aspects of the hierarchy between animal and human. I aim to find out how we as humans act, and how we treat animals in a not very humanised way. How would it look if we would swap place with animals?
To explain the different aspects of humanity, the work includes a symbolic language. I use different human coded objects, that work as an index I’m creating during my master’s degree.

One of the symbols I use is the cow which functions as a symbol for the animal. I have chosen to work with the cow as it is an animal we use as humans for milk and meat, yet the cow assists and accepts us no matter what we do to them. I feel sorry for the cow, a calm animal with no intention to do harm, which we as humans kill with no mercy. As a symbol for the human, I use Leif GW Persson. He is a Swedish TV personality who takes and is given a lot of space in everyday society, for example in Swedish television.

I have also conducted workshops with children as a method in order to get “dehumanised”, since children have spent less time living as human beings and haven’t yet learned how they should behave. I have been influenced by their ideas in the creation of the installation and will also display their original work that they made during the workshops.