Three years ago, Belgian artist Wim Delvoye’s tattooed Louis Vuitton pigs were banned from SH Contemporary, Shanghai’s largest contemporary art fair. This time, he’s at it again, tattooing more odious designs, and on more pigs!

The 46 year old artist, who claims to be a vegetarian, has been tattooing live pigs since 1997. He now runs a pig farm in the suburb’s of Beijing’s Shunyi District, where he works with Chinese tattoo artists to ink pigs with an array of designs, from Louis Vuitton logos and Walt Disney cartoon characters to Chinese motifs.

Before each pig is tattooed, it is first made to sign a model release form, sedated, shaved and applied with Vaseline. The tattoos are then allowed to grow on the pigs for a while before they are sold to “art” collectors from all over the world.

In 2008, the skins could fetch about 10,200 USD a piece. Today, each canvas can set you back by as much as 1 million RMB (around 152,000 USD), if reports by Chinese news agencies are to be believed.

The question is: do you want your piece of art dead or alive?

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