Oxford,  2025. In Stephanie Lane’s performance installation, a woman lies curled on a table while people gather around her as if waiting to dine, wine glasses in hand. The comparison is immediate and unsettling: a human body made to stand in for the hidden bodies of birds routinely bred, confined and slaughtered for food.

 

At the scale demanded by the human population, this industry cannot operate gently. Billions of chickens and other birds are treated as units of production, moved through systems too vast to allow care, dignity or mercy. Such numbers cannot be slaughtered without immense suffering; the cruelty is not accidental, but built into the food industry itself. ‘Go Vegan.’ They declare, ‘It is a moral responsibility.’