Images from the Feedlots series by artist Mishka Henner document the impact the intensive meat industry has on the environment. Made from the merging of hundreds of satellite imagery captures, these seemingly abstract photographs show the infrastructures of several American cattle farms.

The race to maximize profit in the shortest possible time means shortening the life expectancy of calves by more than 20 years, the addition of growth hormones and antibiotics in their diet, and the construction of efficient pens. The tons of urine and manure generated by these animals are channelled through pipes that pour out into immense lagoons, where the different chemicals needed to make them decompose end up seeping into the earth. This intensive process of meat production predominant in the US, in turn requires large areas of land where food is grown with the help of fertilizers.

Henner’s work identifies, transforms and recontextualises publically available images, and explores the effect that productive and extractive systems generated by humans have on other living beings and on the planet.

Born in Belgium in 1976, Mishka Henner is a visual art who currently lives in the UK. He holds a Masters degree from Goldsmiths College in London. His varied practice navigates through the digital terrain to focus on key subjects of cultural and geo-political interest. He often produces books, films, photographic, and sculptural works that reflect on cultural and industrial infrastructures in a process involving extensive documentary research combined with the meticulous reconstruction of imagery from materials sourced online. His work has featured in group shows at the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Centre Pompidou, Paris and Centre Pompidou Metz, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, FOAM Amsterdam, and Turner Contemporary, Margate. In 2013 was awarded the Infinity Award for Art by the International Center of Photography. He was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in the same year and in 2014, was on the shortlist for the Prix Pictet for his large-scale works focusing on landscapes carved by the oil and beef industries of America.

Mishka Henner (Belgium, 1976)
Feedlots

2021 Edition
Outdoor installation
Venue: Ereaga Gardens