Varkens zonder achterpoten Possibly 1785

Curator: It looks like the start of a rather peculiar joke, but Jan Brandes’ "Pigs Without Hind Legs" from around 1785 makes me stop in my tracks. Editor: It strikes me as quite bleak, really. These figures, meticulously rendered in pencil, stand as symbols of… what, exactly? Absence? Lack? The gaze is direct, challenging, and unsettling. Curator: Absence is key, I think. Note how precisely the artist depicts what is there – the textures, the musculature, even the peculiar shape of the hindquarters, truncated as they are. The "lack" is almost a presence in itself. Editor: I read the presence of absence in socio-political terms. Brandes was traveling in Ceylon when he created this work, now known as Sri Lanka, at the height of Dutch colonial rule. The visual lack of the pigs resonates with the material and structural lack that were violently enforced through colonial exploitation. Curator: Interesting idea. I’d assumed the strange anatomy had more to do with Brandes’ eccentric eye—he was a minister, but something of an oddball and known for depicting exotic creatures in sometimes-odd ways. Editor: Exactly! But that "eccentricity," let’s remember, flourished in a context saturated with violence and domination. This supposed realism obscures the violence inherent in observing and documenting the colonized world as "other." The detached hand of the artist only serves to amplify the impact and brutality. Curator: The pigs become a distorted mirror, reflecting the fractured realities of that historical moment. Perhaps they aren't just missing hind legs but something more symbolic? Editor: Yes! The missing parts can signify much more than immediately meets the eye, particularly when positioned within such an intersectional, intercontinental history of dispossession and cultural alienation. Curator: Maybe there's a degree of unexpected, almost defiant beauty in their incompleteness. Or is it just an absurd image after all? Editor: Its visual ambiguity is a critical part of the experience. And perhaps the "joke" reveals some unsettling truths after all.