By Alexis Baran
@lextacular
Right now, in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, a wing of the century-old Patricia Hotel is home to a collection of imagined creatures, each paused in a moment of reflection. Their skin is smooth, with layers of moles, freckles, blue veins appearing at times just under the surface. There is a ripple of bones, muscle, soft bellies, flush cheeks, and wrinkles. Real human hair sprouts from beneath the skin, and the weight of each creature falls heavy on the washed and folded sheets of each hotel bed. Their expressions are human, their situations are familiar, and I couldn’t help but feel a sense of uncomfortable voyeurism looking at them so closely, waiting for them to take a breath.
These are the sculptures of Australian artist, Patricia Piccinini for her Curious Imaginings exhibit, as a part of the 2018 Vancouver Biennale. In the exhibit, Piccinini imagines a not-too-distant future, where genetic engineering produces new forms of life, challenging how far from human something needs to get before we stop relating to them in a human way. This future is cast with a myriad of characters, from human-pig-dog hybrids, to a near-hairless human-beaver, to a lump with a sphincter oozing something akin to honey.
At the start of the exhibit, each visitor is met in the hallway with The Offering, a tiny infantile looking creature about the size of the palm of my hand, with passively closed eyes and a body sparsely covered in hair. This is the only sculpture you’re allowed to touch, and they ask that you get any inclination you have to lay your hands on the works out of your system right away. Once inside the rooms of the hotel, it’s clear why—the sculptures of Patricia Piccinini are so lifelike, I nearly expected them to be warm.
In the first room, The Welcome Guest confronts our perception of reality, comfort and our biases of beauty and what forms we empathize with. With the iconic Patricia Hotel neon sign visible through the window, a delighted child stands on the bed, reaching out in a near embrace to a nightmarish creature with a pattern of blonde fur running from its head down its back who is wrapping its long rigid claws around the child, about to touch her. You need to go into the room and to the other side of the bed to see the creature’s disarmingly kind face, gazing back at the child with equal benevolence and curiosity.
The sense of repulsion and then understanding continues in each room with new characters, each relatable in their own way. The creatures are strange, eerily present, sometimes grotesque, but always with their own beauty, in all its lumpy, hairy, mammalian, fleshy glory.
As I moved through, room to room, I reflected on empathy and the perceived differences between humans, animals we share our lives with, creatures in the wild, and ones we engineer/breed/manipulate to serve a purpose.
From the bustling streets of the Downtown Eastside, to the quirky historic rooms of the Patricia Hotel, the dioramas of imagined creatures and lives are suspended beside windows to the movement below. A sense of place and time are integral to this work, and no matter how many photos you see, physically being in the space is an experience all its own.
Curious Imaginings is at the Patricia Hotel in Vancouver until December 15, 2018. For information and tickets, visit vancouverbiennale.com.
If there’s a cat in sight, Alexis will be sitting on the ground petting (and probably talking to) it. She likes to travel as much as possible, and unintentionally collects books, vintage dresses, dead plants, rocks, dust, and unfinished projects.
