It is the Norwegian artist Astri Tonoian who sculpted the life-size replica of the animal unveiled on the Kongen Marina in Olso. A work commissioned not by the town hall but by thousands of anonymous people who opened a kitty on the internet just after his death.
“We must learn to coexist” : the sculptor Astri Tonoian is Norwegian, she intends to shake up our view of wildlife and to do this, her latest work pays homage to a walrus. A female walrus, precisely, which made the headlines last summer in Norway. It was in the middle of July, for several weeks, this massive mammal, which we recognize thanks to its long tusks and its mustaches, had taken up residence on the port of Oslo, in the middle of the tourist season, attracting a number of curious all obsessed with the idea of taking a picture of her, with her, of filming her, of trying to touch her for the most unconscious.
Faced with all this stress, the female walrus, which in the meantime had been given the first name Freya, began to climb on the boats to escape the bustle of the quays, capsizing the smallest boats, overturning furniture on the large, degrading bridges and footbridges. So much so that after a month, the port authorities decided to euthanize it, to put it down. To kill her. “Persistent threat to human securitysaid the press release, and impossibility of guaranteeing the welfare of the animal“. A decision that shocked Norway, and far beyond.
All over the world, Internet users, editorialists, associations were moved. Couldn’t we have done otherwise? Prohibit passers-by from approaching? Imposing fines on the inconsistent? Should it necessarily be the animal that pays for the attitude of humans? To pay homage to Freya, Astri Tonoian therefore produced a statue of her, in life-size bronze, paid not by the town hall but by thousands of anonymous via an online kitty.
The work has just been installed on the quay of the Kongen Marina in Oslo, very close to the place where the animal was euthanized, and the visual effect is so striking that it really seems to be sleeping on its base. “And this is the desired effectexplains Astri Tonoian to the New York Times, I made it as realistic as possible, first for all those who have not had the chance to see it and then to open the conversation, so that we wonder about our reactions to us, humans, faced with to what we don’t know.“Astri Tonoian talks about getting to know the unknown, to change perspective and manage to coexist with all beings, animals, plants, and of course also other humans.