Mo Ganji: Irish Goat | Irische Ziege | Capra hircus | No. 104/250 from work group 8/99

Irish Goat | Irische Ziege | Capra hircus

Mo Ganji’s single line engages the Irish goat — a hardy feral domestic mammal shaped by wind-exposed landscapes and long self-sufficiency — by drawing attention to its inner coherence rather than its outward traits. The continuous line holds a compact kernel of presence, allowing the being to appear without fixing it to utility, breed or historical role. In this paring back, essence is not illustrated but quietly allowed to stand.

Capra hircus, as a domestic species, is not assessed on the IUCN Red List, as the classification applies only to wild species. However, feral goat populations in Ireland represent long-established lineages that have adapted to coastal cliffs, uplands and marginal terrains. Their status is shaped less by global extinction risk than by local management practices, land-use change and shifting perceptions of what belongs within “natural” landscapes.

Pressures on Irish feral goats include habitat modification, culling, loss of traditional grazing systems and debates over their ecological role. As animals that exist between the categories of wild and domestic, they are especially vulnerable to changing human definitions rather than biological limitation. Their persistence depends largely on cultural decisions rather than ecological thresholds alone.

Ganji’s single line opens a space in which the goat can be encountered beyond usefulness or classification. It invites attention to a being that unsettles clear boundaries between nature and culture, gently reminding us that such divisions are human constructs — and that our own place within the living world is similarly shaped by continuity, adaptation and long entanglement rather than separation.