With “Happy Zoo,” Anita Lam Makes a Case for Artistic Environmentalism

Artist Anita Lam didn’t set out to reinvent the zoo, but after reading John Berger’s Why Look at Animals?, she found herself rethinking the joy they’d once brought her. Questions began to take shape in her mind: What does it mean to confine an animal for human spectatorship? What do our structures of display say about how we view other species and ourselves? These and other inquiries eventually gave rise to “Happy Zoo,” a conceptual art series developed through ALAN (Artists who Love Animals and Nature)...