Sue Coe
Sue Coe is a British-American activist and artist who works in free graphics, drawing and painting. She makes books, posters or numbered prints to disseminate her messages of social criticism. Coe’s fight for animal liberation is strongly influenced by her youth. She grew up in Tamworth, in England, beside a pig slaughterhouse: the smell and cries of animals that were about to die left a lasting impression.
In her publications The Animals’ Vegan Manifesto (2017) and Zooicide (2018), Coe brings together etchings and texts as a manifesto for leaving animals alone, eating plant-based food and closing zoos. Her drawings show animals in pain or subject to exhaustion, defilement, torture or the murder of their peers for human enjoyment. Power games between humans also feature in her work. Besides animal suffering, Coe also decries misogyny, homophobia, racism, fascism and capitalism in her work. She sees clear links between the way we behave towards animals and towards each other.
Empathy, 2017
Exhibited works:
A Mother’s Sorrow, 2016
Abortion Vigilantes (For Daring to Provide Healthcare to Women and Girls), 2022
Boucherie Humaine, 2016
Empathy, 2017
Happy Meat, 2015
Humans Only Party, 2016
Lions in the Zoo, 2016
Pigs Wear Cat Masks, 2016
The Lobster’s Escape, 2016
Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop, 2020
Courtesy Galerie St. Etienne, New York