Tracey Rose
PIG (1999)
The title of this painting is mentioned in the written text on the canvas, which reads like an extract from a diary. The text describes an individual’s revulsion when seeing a pig’s head on the kitchen counter, ready to be eaten. Splashes of red paint across the surface of the canvas create a blood-spattered effect. The color of the text is initially pink, suggesting the color of a pig’s skin, and transforms to black. The term ‘pig’ is commonly used as an insult to describe men whose behavior, typically in public, is immoral and inappropriate.
During the nineteenth century in Britain, ‘pig’ was also used as slang by petty criminals to describe police officers who harassed thieves and pickpockets. In American and African diasporic Black liberation movements, pig is used to describe racist and violent white police officers who target Black people. In apartheid South Africa, white police officers formed death squads used by the state to kill protestors and murder anti-apartheid activists. Resistance to the police stems from the belief that they are used by racist governments as instruments to arrest and torture Black activists.
In the Western feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s, the term ‘chauvinist pig’ was used to describe a misogynistic man who oppresses women. PIG highlights the struggle to dismantle patriarchal white supremacy in all its forms.