Damien Hirst’s art installation featuring fly-killing UV light is being removed from Germany’s museum after PETA complained it violated insect rights
- The famous British artist’s work was removed after an animal rights campaign
- A Thousand Years shows flies being killed by UV light within seconds of hatching
- PETA slammed the display stating, “Killing animals has nothing to do with art”
- An estimated one million creatures were killed in Hirst art, mostly insects
A work by famed British artist Damien Hirst was removed after animal rights activists complained that a UV light inside was killing flies.
A Thousand Years (1990) features two connected showcases, one containing a box in which flies and maggots hatch and another containing a UV light.
Flies hatch and make their way to the light before being tapped.
The iconic work was removed from the exhibition at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, northern Germany, this week after opposition from PETA and the city’s veterinary office.
Although a tamer version of “A Thousand Years” was shown than before, PETA and the Wolfsburg Veterinary Office still lobbied for the work’s removal – and won
Famed artist Hirst, 57, is reportedly Britain’s richest living artist (file picture)
They claimed the play violated Germany’s Animal Welfare Act, which prohibits killing or harming animals “without good reason.”
A PETA representative said: “The killing of animals has nothing to do with art, it just shows the arrogance of people who will stop at literally nothing for their own interests.”
“We thought flies didn’t come under the Animal Welfare Act,” says museum director Andreas Beitin.
Earlier versions of the work included a decomposing cow’s head under the light, but this was not on display at the art museum.
Herr Hirst, whose work often revolves around death, has described the play as “a cycle of life in a box”.
The British artist’s works are believed to have featured a million dead animals, most of them insects.
His most famous work, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991), is a preserved tiger shark encased in glass.
According to legend, post-war painter and Hirst’s hero Francis Bacon once studied A Thousand Years for more than an hour.
The piece was first exhibited at the Bermondsey Gallery Building One in 1990.
Hirst’s collector and former friend Charles Saatchi reportedly gaped at the work when it was first unveiled – before buying it.
The head of a rotting cow featured prominently in a version unveiled at the Tate Modern ten years ago
Hirst poses with the cloaked tiger shark, his most famous work, at the Tate Modern in April 2012
More than 9,000 butterflies were killed during the six-month series In and Out of Love at Tate Modern in 2012.
The RSPCA criticized the “so-called ‘art exhibition'” and said: “There would be a national outcry if such an exhibition included any other animal – such as a dog.
“Just because we’re talking about butterflies here doesn’t mean they don’t deserve to be treated with kindness.”