Jacqueline Traide was dragged by a rope around her neck, her mouth was stretched open with metal hooks attached to a strap around her head, she had a strip of her hair shaved off and her skin was abraded, as she sat in a shop window in Regent’s Street.
In the 10- hour ordeal, the 24-year-old artist was was also given injections and force fed food, as she choked and gagged.
The point was that elsewhere in the world, an animal was in a laboratory being subjected to the same treatment merely to test an expensive new mascara. But while Triade survived – though shivering and nursing red raw skin on her cheek – the animal will have suffered a miserable death.
Triade said of the performance:”’I hope it will plant the seed of a new awareness in people to really start thinking about what they go out and buy and what goes into producing it.”
The campaign was orchestrated at a Lush cosmetic store, a ‘cruelty-free’ chain, which is helping to spearhead a Humane Society International campaign to end cosmetic testing on animals.
Joining Triade was performance artist Oliver Cronk, dressed as a clipboard-toting lab technician.
He watched as her arm bled when his patient tried to resist and injection.
Lush campaign manager Tamsin Omond said: “The ironic thing is that if it was a beagle in the window and we were doing all these things to it, we’d have the police and RSPCA here in minutes.
“But somewhere in the world, this kind of thing is happening to an animal every few seconds on average.
The difference is, it’s normally hidden. We need to remind people it is still going on.”
