📝 Exhibition Description:

Since she burst into international prominence at the 2003 Venice Biennale, Patricia Piccinini has become famous for creating some of the most troubling — yet lyrical — artworks of our time. Using silicone, human hair, and animal fur, she imagines creatures that are hyper-realistic and disquietingly surreal, to ask us to think about what it means to be human; how that is rapidly changing through advances in medicine, science, and technology; and how we might go about understanding those changes.
Empathy is at the heart of Piccinini's practice. When she envisions a co-mingling of animal, plant, machine, and human, she asks us to question the "otherness" of creatures — cyber-forms, or humans who don't resemble the "norm." Viewers often react to her work by recoiling... a reaction triggered by the difficulty we have of feeling a connection to those we consider "different." One of the strengths of Piccinini's work is the way it forces us to confront and assess those feelings.