By Pushpita Das Gupta
I recently started to work on the upcoming Who Speaks for the Oceans? exhibition for the Mishkin Gallery and came across many artists and artworks related to aquatic animals. Most of these artworks were associated with whales and were very interesting to research and learn about. While conducting research for the exhibition, I came across a work of art by Jan Peter Hammer from 2013 that was inspired by the orca Tilikum. The artwork is a plastic sculpture of a whale, but the sculpture was deflated. Here the deflated whale can signify the whale’s hopelessness from the amount of torture and hardship it faced throughout its life. Tilikum was raised in captivity and was owned by SeaWorld, a mammal based marine theme park Tilikum’s popularity rose after he killed his human trainer during a show. After this incident, many rules and regulations for maintaining whales at SeaWorld changed and the movie Blackfish was released in 2013 which also drew attention to the issues. Blackfish reflected the brutality that whale’s and other animals encounter in captive environments. To understand Tilikum and Blackfish fully, the story must be narrated from the beginning.
Tilikum was an orca whale who was captured at the age of two years old from Iceland and was raised in captivity. Tilikum grew up at SeaWorld, Canada, where he was placed with two female whales that were also growing in captivity. He was often bullied by these two whales and was often separated from them. However, Tilikum’s first incident with human death involved these two other whales. The three whales killed Keltie Byrne, a marine biology student, who accidentally fell into the pool during the whales’ playing session. After this incident, Tilikum was transferred to SeaWorld, Orlando where he encountered his second human death. According to SeaWorld, Daniel P. Duke had snuck into SeaWorld after hours and entered Tilikum’s tank without any clothes on. The next morning, Duke was found to be dead.
These two deaths were not as popular in the media as the death of Dawn Brancheau who was Tilikum’s trainer. After a show with Tilikum, Brancheau was pulled into the tank by Tilikum and was tossed around in the water. Even after multiple attempts to escape, Brancheau lost to Tilikum’s strength and passed away. This incident led SeaWorld to implement new measures taken to decrease human interaction with whales. Even after three deaths that involved Tilikum, SeaWorld refused to free Tilikum and continued to involve him in multiple entertainment shows. The incident also brought to light how poorly animals are treated in SeaWorld. Blackfish highlighting these cruelties and brought these realities to general census, causing SeaWorld’s popularity to plummet. SeaWorld’s main feature of attraction came from their shows that highly depended on whales and other marine creature, however the attractive feature was lost and people decided to stay away from the organization because of its ethical dilemma of poorly treating animals. Even though the shows did not fully stop, people were less interested in associating themselves with the organization. Unfortunately, Tilikum was never released into the nature until he passed away from lung disease.
This film and sculpture gives us the opportunity to see the world from different perspectives than we normally do. The artwork can help viewers understand Tilikum position and why the killings happened. Though people would typically blame the whale for the deaths and view whales as dangerous animals, this artwork can help explain the unfortunate conditions of whales in captivity and other reasons why these attacks may have taken place.
