The Missing Link Paradox
 

​An art installation by Lucia Babjakova (Colonnade House, Worthing, August 2025)

 

“Calling people animals is always an ominous sign because it sets them up for humiliation, exploitation, and murder.” Charles Patterson

 

This installation is a short journey through colonisation and oppression, how it has its roots in our relationship with animals and their daily slaughter, and how this enables extreme cruelty to humans to be normalised.

 

The paradox is the refusal of most humans to recognise the continuous slaughter and enslavement of animals as being cruel, even though many have pets and think they love them. This denial of connection is the same fault line that allows extreme human cruelty to happen without protest.

“Once animal exploitation was industrialized and accepted as part of the natural order of things, it opened the door to similar ways of treating other human beings, thus paving the way for such atrocities as human slavery.”

 

“The study of human history reveals the pattern: first humans exploit and slaughter animals; then, they treat other people like animals and do the same to them.” (Patterson, 2002).

 

Charles, Patterson (2002). Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust. New York: Lantern Books.