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Projects by Leszek Golec (born in 1959) and Tatiana Czekalska (born in 1966) such as Wearing Wihte Vege Fur Petformance for Photography created in 2009, in which the artists point to the creativity of animals and acknowledge their co-authorship in the process of creating artworks, are the hallmark of their oeuvre. The call for a rethinking of ideas about animals resonates today, thanks in part to the so-called animal studies, which emerged in the 1990s. Research conducted in the field of cognitive ethology, a science that focuses on the observation of behaviours of animals in their natural environment, was key to its development. They have proven that animals can acquire and transfer skills, use tools and lead social lives. But can an animal be an artist? Is noticing the artistic intervention in animal activity, which so far has been associated exclusively with human domain a gesture liberating us from narrow understanding of the essence of animal experience? Should we rather perceive this as an uncalled for projection of human ability onto beings whose true abilities we cannot know? To date, science has never given us a clear answer to questions about the structures of animal mentality, despite new knowledge from the domain of ethology. Golec and Czekalska seek the answer focusing on tools available to art.

Magdalena Lewoc