cow-eyed (2025) is a video performance with cow eyeballs and custom PLA goggles
cow-eyed was commissioned by fabricatie gallery in Zeeland, Netherlands, as part of their exhibition PROTEIN: a foray into the food industry, November 7-9, 2025. The exhibition additionally featured work by Giels Louws and Aria Dean.
When I encounter a living cow, most often at a petting zoo, or behind a fence at a nearby dairy farm, I am struck by how their gaze mirrors my own impulse to look. It can feel for a moment -- if only within my human perspective -- as though the curiosity is briefly shared across species lines.
cow-eyed is about the cow's eyes, or beef eyeballs, or both. The English distinction between 'beef' and 'cow' reflects a long history of cultural separation between a living creature and its edible form. In post-industrial cultures, we know -- comfortably -- beef does not include the cow's gaze. In the United States, food and safety regulations prohibit the use of the eyeballs in products meant for human consumption. Beef, also, does not include the cow's eyes. I took these castoffs of the American meat industry, obtained through donation from a local butcher, in order to reinsert the beef eyeball in the living act of gazing.