1. Sue Coe
Sue Coe grew up near a slaughterhouse in Hersham, England, and as a child, was accustomed to hearing noises such as screams and the rattling of chains emanate from the building. At the time, she was not encouraged to question the practices of the slaughterhouse, but after becoming more immersed in political art as an adult, she said, “I want to know how much that childhood knowledge effects collusion in later life … where one is trained not to question, not to be curious, not to make demands on things that could be wrong.”
In her ground-breaking works, “Dead Meat” (1996) and “Cruel” (2012), she shone a harsh spotlight on the truth behind how animals are treated by the factory farm system. She believes that people’s apathy towards the plight of animals has come about partially because “humans are being factory farmed, trained to look away and just consume, never question, live in fear and debt, and die quietly and efficiently.”