Dog tags

The dog tags series was an addition to the W.O.M exhibit. 100 dog tags were hand engraved by the artist. They were made without hesitation and without the over-calculated art normally seen in Prieur’s work. The concept was to engrave them as fast as possible like an embossing machine would in a manufacturing process.

The representation of these dog tags in his exhibit was about labelling the sled dogs with the simple word –DOG- engraved, with a number on the back.

Prieur engraved and created 100 of these tags in less than 38 hours. His determination was a personal challenge to beat the time it took to deliberately kill 56 sled dogs, performed by Bob Fawcett on April 21 and April 23, 2010.

“To create art as rapidly as I did on the dog tags series was mentally consuming. What I learned from this experience is the comparison between my emotions and compassion versus a machine embossing dog tags and the person operating it. As an artist, and in the case of honouring the slaughtered sled dogs of Whistler, this art experiment was fucking sad to accomplish in a span of less than 38hrs. Something a dog tag pressing machine could never feel prior to any future death count.” (Jerome Prieur 2020)