Patricia Piccinini: "The Young Family"



This is an extremely interesting piece, denotatively the picture depicts some sort of creature laying on her right side nursing two of her young, while another lies on it's back. The creature seems to be a peach color, with human and animal-like characteristics. The ears of the creature are long and droopy, like a dog. The face has a snout, but also very human-like wrinkles. Looking down the creature you can see it's arms, legs and hands are that of a human, and it's feet are also human hands. A pointed tail sticks out of the creature's lower back.The young, two of which are sucking on nipple-like utters on their mother's stomach, have the same traits as the larger creature.

Trying to look deeper into this picture can be confusing and discomforting. On a basic level, I think most people can agree that this creature is extremely unpleasant to look at. In other words, it's ugly. Possibly resulting from it's unfortunate features, the creature looks very depressed, judging by the look on it's face. However, this beast is displaying an act of life and love that many would describe as beautiful. Asking the question: can we find beauty in such a beast? On one level this work may be conveying some sort of inter-connectivity humans share with animal. However, it seems to be a bit darker, almost like it's a warning for what could one day be in this era of biological manipulation.

That final idea can be expanded on when giving this piece some intertextuality. Here are some related pictures.



Patricia Piccini is very interested in questioning the consequences of the scientific enhancement of life, specifically, the modification of human and animal life through things like stem cells and genomic imprinting. The first of these pictures is called still life with stem cells. Clearly, Patricia is trying to make the point that stem cell research is dangerous. The last picture was actually taken from my biology textbook, it's a pig injected with the genes of a jellyfish giving it a florescent glow created by Taiwanese scientist. The young family reminds seems to be another genetically modified creature showing just what humans may create if they follow down their current path.