Patricia Piccinini’s 'CARE': Imagining Humanity’s Evolving Bond with Nature and Technology
“For nothing contributes so much to tranquilise the mind as a steady purpose- a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.” – Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, Mary Shelley.
We often attribute humanity to what is familiar. We tend to view things we understand as ‘natural,’ while labelling anything outside of our understanding as ‘unnatural.’ As one walks through Patricia Piccini’s CARE exhibition in Museum Macan, the audience is encouraged to think about the extent of the familiar. Her exhibition blurs the lines between concepts of humanity, the natural world and synthetic materials to explore the concept of the bond between humanity and their environments. Her use of a combination of these materials is intended to make her audience think, “How far can humanity go to create the ideal world?”
Many fascinating concepts are explored in Patricia Piccinini’s work. It immerses the audience into an uncanny world where things look and feel familiar but still eerie. Piccini stated that she is “…interested in relationships: the relationship between the artificial and the natural, between humans and the environment.” In her artistic process, she focuses on showcasing relationships and intimacy to evoke a sense of empathy. Her exploration of the intimate relationship between humans and environments relates to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of Sustainable Cities and Communities, Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure and Life on Land.
In her work, Piccinini combines different aspects of environmental sciences and humanity to entice her audience’s exploration of their relationship with the natural world. Her surrealist exploration of the connection between humans and the world is particularly evident in No Fear of Depths (2019), as an exploration of the human and animalistic concept of maternal love and humanity’s relationship with the sea. The sculpture is based on the Australian Humpback Dolphin and her daughter, Roxy. The cultural role of the mother is seen as the backbone of traditional society, serving the role of the societal caretaker. However, one must also consider the human’s role as a caretaker to the environment, as their ‘maternal’ relationship is often neglected in favour of unsustainable developments. Through No Fear of Depths (2019), Piccinini compels the audience to ask themselves, “What does it matter about profit, or even new technologies, if there is no planet to live on?”
In Kindred (2018), Piccinini explores the idea of motherhood through her depiction of an orangutan ‘mother’ and her children. The piece is MACAN’s ‘hero’ piece for the exhibition, being used in most promotional materials for the exhibition. The piece has many uncanny humanistic traits, such as fingernails, pink lips decorated with lipstick and neatly done blonde hair. As Darwin’s theory of evolution suggests humans have close evolutionary bonds to apes, Piccinini’s use of the Orangutan can be seen as a reference to the role of the mother in the past and the present. As humans evolve with their environments, we often overlook the traits we keep from our past. Piccinini’s exploration of relationships include this concept of maternal evotion, as even when humans evolve to become ‘less human’, their relationship with their young still stays the same.
As society moves into an innovative world full of industrialization, humanity shifts focus to making the ideal possible through all means necessary. Patricia Piccinini’s work often criticizes the current relationship between humans and the environment by including elements of scientific experimentation in her work. When considering the concept of such scientific innovation, Donna Haraway’s exploration of posthumanism comes to mind. Posthumanism refers to the mode of thinking that intersects humans, nonhumans, and technology in the wake of ecological consciousness. As humanity furthers itself into scientific progress, humans will one day become chimaeras, “fabricated hybrids of machine and organism.” In creating an image of the combination of the human as a proxy to the audience and the animal as the proxy to the impacts of industrialization on the environment, Piccinini guides her audience to see the consequences of creating ideal naturalistic environments. By combining the human, the animal and the synthetic, Piccinini encourages her audience to care about the impact of industrialization on our environment.
Walking through Patricia Piccinini’s CARE, the audience is encouraged to consider the impact of unsustainable developments on the environment. Development breeds innovation, and Piccinini’s exploration of the biological revolution and its impact on humanity’s relationship with the natural world. It creates a view of the extent to which exploration and innovation can create new forms of normal. However, the question of its ethics is up to the audience’s interpretation. To what extent are you comfortable with the prospective future of biological revolution?