Patricia Piccinini: The Awakening

Patricia Piccinini creates some of the most surprising,  provocative and pertinent artworks of our time. Famous for her life-like, chimeric creatures, anthropomorphic sculptures made of fiberglass and extraordinarily elaborate auto body paint jobs, and sculptural hot air balloons, Piccinini raises questions about how we define “human” and how we resolve the complex bio-ethical issues of our rapidly changing world.

In September of this year (2021) Hosfelt Gallery will host Piccinini’s most recent sculptures in an immersive installation. In May, as a foretaste of that exhibition, Hosfelt is screening Piccinini’s new 9-minute digital animation, The Awakening — its premiere in the Americas.

The Awakening is about something both quintessentially common and inordinately miraculous — birth. It is mesmerizing, beautiful and frightening.  

Based in Melbourne, Patricia Piccinini (b. 1965, Freetown, Sierra Leone) represented Australia in the 2003 Venice Biennale. Her sculpture, video, drawing and installations have been exhibited extensively internationally, including most recently in solo museum exhibitions in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Slovenia, Spain, Taiwan, Brazil, and throughout Australia.