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# Learn to Love Your Meat Before You Meet Your Love
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/learn-to-love-your-meat-before-you-meet-your-love/
- Published: 2015-05-28T17:01:04.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:48:00.000Z
- Description: Raw meat as a metaphoric vessel for sensuality and sex is nothing new.
- Author: Benjamin Sutton
- Tags: Opinion, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:08 (2014, 2015, part 2)

![Sequence from Jan Švankmajer's "Meat Love" (1989) (gif by the author)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/05/meat-love-lede.gif)

Sequence from Jan Švankmajer’s “Meat Love” (1988) (gif by the author)

Raw meat as a metaphoric vessel for sensuality and sex is nothing new. Czech artist and filmmaker [Jan Švankmajer](http://www.awn.com/mag/issue2.3/issue2.3pages/2.3jacksonsvankmajer.html?ref=hyperallergic.com) made light of charcuterie’s carnal characteristics in his 1988 short film “Meat Love.”

One year earlier Canadian conceptual artist [Jana Sterbak](http://www.janasterbak.com/?ref=hyperallergic.com) had offered a different take — one famously [appropriated by Lady Gaga](http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/09/lady-gaga-meat-dress-recycled.html?ref=hyperallergic.com) — on raw meat as an analogy for human flesh with “[Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic](http://www.walkerart.org/collections/artworks/vanitas-flesh-dress-for-an-albino-anorectic?ref=hyperallergic.com).”

Now, four Dutch art students — Cors Brinkman, Jeroen van Oorschot, Marcello Maureira, and Matei Szabo — have created a “Meat Love” for the 21st century. Dubbed “Tender” (2014), the piece consists of a rotating hunk of meat that systematically swipes right on a smartphone strategically located beneath it with the dating application [Tinder](http://www.gotinder.com/?ref=hyperallergic.com) open. As the [Leiden University](http://www.leidenuniv.nl/?ref=hyperallergic.com) students wrote on [Vimeo](https://vimeo.com/111997940?ref=hyperallergic.com): “‘Tender’ is the easy way to connect with new and interesting meat around you.” Here’s to meeting that special someone in meatspace.

*h/t* [*The Creators Project*](http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/this-piece-of-meat-just-swiped-right?ref=hyperallergic.com)