Zooicide: Seeing Cruelty, Demanding Abolition

Description

"In 'Zooicide,' Sue Coe employs her bold artistic style to confront the institution of zoos, showing that they are inherently cruel and that the solution is not to reform them, but to abolish them. Coe's visual journalism investigates the mental anguish inflicted upon animals--including instances where they have killed themselves to end their torture. She depicts famous tragedies like the killing of the gorilla Harambe at the Cincinnati Zoo in 2016 alongside lesser known but equally heart-wrenching incidents like the beating death of hippo Gustavito at a zoo in El Salvador. Zoos may pay lip service to education, enrichment, and conservation, but their depravity is systemic and ubiquitous. As long as animals are considered property, they will be treated as things, with no rights--things that can be caged, bred, abused, or killed for profit and entertainment. It's time to end this cruelty. A powerful companion to Coe's images, and written specifically for them, Stephen F. Eisenman's essay, 'The Capitalist Zoo,' is a musing on a future where zoos have been abolished, a history of where they came from, and an appreciation of Coe's work and its place in art history"--Page 4 of cover.