by Evan Duggan
VANCOUVER, Sept. 29 (Xinhua) -- A woman stands in a musty hotel room. She has long, bushy hair and is wearing a blue dress. She's cradling in her arms what looks like some kind of humanoid child. It has a human face, but has pig ears and bloated, fleshy skin. The creature's backside looks like the curled sole of a running shoe.
The shocking sculpture is one of a series that are set inside 18 rooms of an entire wing of Vancouver's 105-year-old Patricia Hotel.
The art show is called Curious Imaginings and it is a part of Vancouver's Biennale program.
Curious Imaginings features the work of acclaimed Australian visual artist Patricia Piccinini, who spent many years crafting the captivating and realistic sculptures of humanoids, creatures and inexplicable scenes.
The audience can wander from room to room, experiencing the often-unsettling scenes intimately and close up.
"This is the first time I've shown my work in a hotel," Piccinini tells Xinhua in an interview. "I think it's a great context for the work because it adds another layer of story, of narrative... The context gives it more complexity."
Piccinini said she spent about 25 years working on this series of sculptures, but the newest is only a few months old.
The show aims to evaluate humanity's relationship with technology and control, while having the audience reflect on what we consider to be natural and artificial in our lives.
The Bienalle's curator had worked with Piccinini before in Brazil, said Paul Schellenberg, the director of marketing for the Bienalle, which is a non-profit charitable organization that aims to spark public engagement with art from around the world. The curator had the idea of setting up the show in a hotel and drove around the city looking for the ideal location.
The hotel setting feels like the perfect fit as a "transient place", Piccinini, said. "Would this be the kind of place that these creatures would come to? Is this where they belong? Because of course, one of the questions about this work is that it's asking where does new life belong in our lives? On the fringes? Do we love the nature that we change? Or will we just use it as a resource?"
The artist said the show presents a balancing act of beauty and grotesqueness, although it is the audience that decides which of those things they're experiencing.
There's also a major element of motherhood and nurturing in her pieces, Piccinini said.
So far, the feedback has been very positive and interesting, she said. "I think it really captures people's imagination. They come in here and they don't know what to expect. Every room is different and every room has a different story that they can connect to, and I think that's a very engaging sort of situation."
Curious Imaginings is a ticketed event that will remain on display through Dec. 15 at the Patricia Hotel in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
