Opening Friday, June 12, 2026, 6–8 pm

Exhibition hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 12–5 pm, extended hours through 8 pm on Wednesdays, and by appointment

On view through September 11, 2026

Squeaky Wheel presents an exhibition and public programs thinking through and on non-human animals. The artists – working in animation, essay films, speculative narratives, installation work, among other forms – address domestication, colonialism, extinction, and conservation, and the toll humans extract from our co-inhabitants on earth. The exhibition features work by Amy Ching-Yan Lam, Annika Eriksson, Cameron A. Granger, Christina Corfield, Deniz Tortum & Sister Sylvester, G. Anthony Svatek, Miranda Javid, and Noor Abuarafeh, with films by Serge Avédikian, Chris Marker, and Wiame Haddad in the screening program.

The title of the exhibition – with us at the center of our world – is from John Berger’s quintessential essay “Why Look at Animals?”, describing the place and role humans placed animals: how we may have seen and defined ourselves, our world through and with them. The works take on various perspectives, looking with and at animals, and how the forces of capitalism, control, colonialism, and war are now intertwined in our relationships with them. Thinking through these forces, the collected works in the exhibition ask: what is the world that humans and animals are at the center of, and are other worlds possible?

Left to right: Annika Eriksson, The Community (2010); Miranda Javid, Little Winds That Died Immediately (2019); Noor Abuarafeh, Am I the ageless object at the museum? (2018); Deniz Tortum & Sister Sylvester, Our Ark (2022).

The exhibition features multiple strands for visitors to think through our relationship with non-human animals. Miranda Javid’s characteristically spectacular animated work Little Winds That Died Immediately features small animals as they try to survive under the force of humans using the artist’s signature transformative style, with its subtle and evocative soundtrack heard through the gallery. Amy Ching-Yan Lam’s Looty Goes to Heaven is written from the perspective of Looty, a small Pekingese dog that was stolen by British troops and gifted to Queen Victoria. The speculative fiction work—with Looty’s life told in the book and her restful afterlife in the video work made with Emerson Maxwell—speaks tenderly and often humorously to the obscene legacies left by the British empire on China during the Second Opium War. Cameron A. Granger’s stunning Just Below Heaven imagines the dreams and inner life of a pigeon trained for the machinery of American control; while Christina Corfield’s installation Pony Players Review thinks through the connections and settlements enabled in the U.S. by the Pony Express. Cutting together technology advertisements across decades that feature animals and nature in selling televisions, G. Anthony Svatek’s A Whole New Species harkens to the everpresent narrative of ownership, spectacle, and control over our world. Thinking through curated forms of animal collection such as zoos—what Berger called “living monument(s) to their own disappearance”—Noor Abuarafeh’s Am I the ageless object at the museum? considers zoos, museums, and cemeteries through an evocative narrative and footage of zoos in Palestine, Switzerland, and Egypt. Paired in the center of the exhibition with Abuarafeh’s work, Deniz Tortum and Sister Sylvester’s Our Ark documents the possibilities and consequences of efforts to backup virtual replicas of the world. Finally, Annika Erikkson’s video The Community features a carpet with several street cats in Turkey, opening a space for us to consider the roles and responsibilities of domestication, and the possibility of creating new spaces for human animals and non-human animals to gather.

Left to right: Cameron A. Granger, Just Below Heaven (2025); Christina Corfield, Pony Players Review (2020-Present); G. Anthony Svatek, A Whole New Species (1956–2026); Amy Ching-Yan Lam with Emerson Maxwell, Looty Goes to Heaven (2022).

Additional work will be shared with a screening of films, including Chris Marker’s Chats Perchés (The Case of the Grinning Cat) accompanied by the short films Serge Avédikian’s Chienne D’histoire (Barking Island) and Wiame Haddad’s Sang Titre. Avédikian’s animated film, Chienne D’histoire, tells the story of the 1910 dog exile and massacre in Ottoman Istanbul, where thousands of dogs were rounded up and sent to a nearby Island to die in an attempt to modernize the empire in its final years; the film quite clearly asks us to make the connection between the event and the Armenian Genocide. Meanwhile, Wiame Haddad’s brief and subtle film, Sang Titre features mysterious Super 8 footage of a donkey that mourns the ongoing genocide in Gaza. The short films will be screened with Chris Marker’s iconic documentary of the 2000s, Chats Perchés (The Case of the Grinning Cat), where the filmmaker reflects on French and international protest movements and culture at the start of the Iraq War through the sudden appearance of alluring portraits of grinning yellow cats through Paris. Click here to learn more about the screening on its respective page.

Squeaky Wheel is excited to feature the work of former Workspace Residents Deniz Tortum, G. Anthony Svatek, and Miranda Javid in this exhibition. Curated by Ekrem Serdar. This exhibition is supported by Teiger Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Special thank you to Andreas Bertman at Filmform – The Art Film & Video Archive in Sweden, Fırat Sezgin and Ecegül Bayram at the Institute of Time, Luigi Loy at Sacrebleu Productions, Bob Hunter at Icarus Films, Carra Stratton, Jenson Leonard, Noor Abuarafeh, Rachael Rakes, Salome Kokoladze and Aurora Picture Show, Sue Ding, and Toleen Touq.

Visitor and accessibility information:

The exhibition can be visited free of charge between 12–5 pm on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, extended hours on Wednesdays from 12–8 pm. Appointments are also available; please email office@squeaky.org with the subject “Exhibition appointment”.

Seating is provided for most work, and additional seating is available upon request. See individual work descriptions for captioning and subtitle information. Works without captions have sound descriptions on wall labels. 

Click here for Squeaky Wheel’s parking, transportation, and overall accessibility information.