Empowering Human Capacity for Change: The Animal from Object to Subject

The perception of animals in society remains highly biased: their place differs according to their “usefulness” or their aesthetic appearance. Above all, in Western society, the animal has been regarded as an object for centuries. With the recent development of science, including biology and ethology, social justice movements, the concept of antispeciesism, and theories based on extensionist ethics, such as animal rights theory and multi-species justice, animals are beginning to emerge from the shadows of the anthropocentric world, especially through the medium of the arts. This article will consider two works of contemporary art that focus on human–animal relations, namely Ever Dundas’s novel Goblin (2017) and the photojournalism project by the non-governmental organization We Animals (founded in 2019). These works depict the animal playing its role as an animal, not as an object or symbol, while at the same time questioning our relationship with non-human animals and highlighting the shift in our perception of the animal. The aim of the article is to analyze how art can bring animals out of invisibility and contribute to changing the place of the animal from object to subject.