Eva Koťátková's Manifesta 16 Installation Confronts Animal Suffering

At Manifesta 16 in Bochum's St. Anna Church, Czech artist Eva Koťátková presents "When Animals Fall From The Sky," an installation featuring plush animal bodies scattered across the church floor. The work references a real mass die-off of migratory birds in the southwestern US five years ago. Koťátková, who gained international recognition in 2013 with "Asylum" at the Venice Biennale, extends her critique of ideological control and totalitarian systems to the exploitation of non-human beings. At the 2024 Venice Biennale, she installed a giant plush giraffe in the Czech Pavilion, telling the story of Lenka, a giraffe captured in Kenya in 1954 and taken to Prague Zoo, where she died after two years and was later stuffed and exhibited. In Bochum, the enlarged plush animals—blackbirds, sparrows, finches, moths, worms—are local species often overlooked. Children from Bochum and Prague will perform silent care for them. Koťátková reflects on how churches historically excluded animals except as mousers or sacrifices, questioning humanity's relationship with nature. She links animal rights to broader social justice movements, asking why images of mass animal deaths fail to provoke societal change.