A controversial exhibition by French-Algerian artist Adel Abdessemed that includes a video installation showing six tethered animals being bludgeoned to death will go ahead, organisers said Wednesday.
The show had been due to open at the prestigious Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin early last month but had to be postponed amid safety concerns for staff and visitors in the wake of protests from animal rights organisations.
The exhibition - Addessemed's first solo show in Italy - will open to the public on Thursday and will include Don't Trust Me, the work documenting the practices of butchers in the Mexican countryside.
Six television screens show video images of six tethered animals - a sheep, a pig, an ox, a horse, a goat and a doe - being bludgeoned to death with a sledgehammer.
Organisers stressed Wednesday that Abdessemed's works had ''as their sole aim the condemnation of violence in all its forms'' but said warnings would be posted in the gallery so as not to upset the public.
The foundation added that ''cultural mediators'' would also be on hand for members of the public who felt the need to talk about the images.
Last month the head of the Turin branch of animal protection society ENPA, Giovanni Pallotto, said he had been ''horrified'' while watching the videos.
''The violence is unprecedented. Why show images of animals being maltreated and tortured to death if not to satisfy some voyeuristic compulsion, on the pretext of artistic freedom?''
Pallotto appealed to the show's sponsors, which include the Piemonte region and Turin city coucil, to disassociate themselves from the show.
Turin council environment chief, Domenico Mangone, was sufficiently concerned by the images to report them to the public prosecutor's office, but judges threw out the case.
''The judges examined the works but did not find any element of a crime,'' the investigating magistrates office said.
When the show opened at a San Francisco gallery last year it was shut down within four days after Abdessemed and gallery staff received death threats from activists describing the installation as ''animal snuff videos''.
New-York based Abdessemed, 37, has a reputation as an 'enfant terrible' in the art world, where he is notorious for shocking works that often break sexual, religious and political taboos.
One of his early installations, Le Mythe de Sisyphe (1996), which featured no animals or violence, fetched 28,600 euros when it went under the hammer at Christie's Paris in December.
Adel Abdessemed - The Wings of God will run at the gallery from Thursday until May 18.
