A little boy is in limbo, perched high on top of a stack of 18 chairs: smiling fearlessly, peering curiously over the edge, admiring the world from above. The viewer might speculate if this daring attempt does not lead to imminent disaster. And from this precarious balance between testing a structure to the limit, where one breathes in the wonders of freedom and achievement, and on the opposite end, the impending danger of total collapse, The Observer could easily read metaphors for the world today, where on many fronts—ecological, scientific, technological—humanity’s capacity for good and for ill threatens to outpace our ability to moderate our rashest impulses. Massive anthropogenic climate change. Widespread extinction of flora and fauna. Overpopulation. New life-changing science and technology, which also seem poised to upend societies. All these re-define how and if we can live together.

Behind the boy on top of the chairs in the exhibition HOPE at Tai Kwun Contemporary is a large video displaying a strange organ throbbing and gestating, regularly disgorging what looks like an egg. This work, The Awakening, refers to the beginning of life, and the spectacular way that life joyfully celebrates the very fact that it is alive. On many levels, the dialectic between the wonders of life in any form and the undercurrent of danger that comes with it — especially when we push our luck as we do — along with the new relationships these conditions invite is inherent in most of Patricia Piccinini’s work. Not just in The Awakening but also in In Bocca Al Lupo, for example, she uses “hyper-surrealistic” computer animations of intestines to reach a climax somewhere between exhaustion and accomplishment. The visual effect, hovering between wonder, horror, and comedy, is a technique Piccinini employs to ensnare viewers’ attention, visually engaging them but also leaving them with challenging questions that linger slowly and persistently, through an entire exhibition replete with such contradictions.

More broadly, Piccinini’s works revolve around the unintended consequences of progress, raising deeper questions about scientific advances and progress. In a way, humanity, too, stands vertiginously on a knife’s edge. In less than three human generations, we have developed weaponry able to annihilate living things on the entire planet many times over, decoded the human genome, completely re-thought gender relationships, invented ways to alter our bodies, and somehow, almost by accident, connected the human population through digital devices; and we are now poised to transform ourselves for a parallel virtual life. An open debate about art, life, and technology cannot simply be reduced to questions about software and hardware, or their development and interactions. It is important to discuss how new technologies directly impact our bodies and our notions of the self, and how they transform our relationships with each other and with other creatures.

With her works exhibited globally for the last 30 years, Patricia Piccinini has accompanied and inspired a lively debate about the unintended consequences of progress, especially the consequences of manipulating life, even enlarging this debate to areas like art and popular culture which go far beyond the domains of science and technology. However, it is a mistake to think that her works represent horrific scenarios of unintended consequences, even if they are sometimes seen that way. Her detailed, fantastic sculptures serve not as props of a future dystopia—as though Dr Frankenstein were to sample different body parts—rather, they are works of hope, staring back at us, projecting the wish and fact that there is, or could be, epiphany and care, that there is an interdependence or co-dependency that should be rewarded with love.

In particular, Piccinini’s works frequently circle around our relations to the Other, from the perspective of imagining these alien-looking creatures in everyday, even domestic situations. In doing so, the artist envisions loving and caring relationships between (different) creatures, whatever gender, age, race, or species they may be. Her figures are often protecting, caring, caressing. Aside from the ambiguity about what kind of creatures it is—a human, animal, flower? Or even a shoe, or a combination of the above?—we see creatures being held or protected, or else caring for another, often in a symbiotic way where one could not exist or survive without the other. We see this not only in her depictions of babies or couples, but different beings in a symbiotic relationship of care for one other. This caring relationship is intimately related to empathy.

Taking a step further, Piccinini’s works in fact reflect on humanity’s somewhat late realisation that the differences between “us” humans and “others” are rather minimal. Would we understand better the interdependences not only between creatures of the same kind but also between animals and humans, when we see that nearly 99% of the DNA in humans and chimpanzees are identical? Or the fact that the DNA of most living organisms have a high correlation? There are very basic questions about the relationships between our human body or bodies in general and Nature writ large.

At the same time, this relationship of commonality is challenged in its fundamentals and at a velocity like never before. Genetic manipulation and editing with tools like CRISPR open great possibilities but of course also bring inherent dangers and moral dilemmas. Such issues are certainly explored by the artist with precision, wit, and humour. Many of her works, for instance, refer to chimeras, or admixtures of different creatures. If we look closer at Piccinini’s sculptures we often see references to mythological and art historical iconography. We see works that are even named after Greek mythology, or adapted from famous paintings. There must be something deeply human, with stories about loving and caring about the other—chimeras, aliens and maybe also monsters—from ancient times to the present. These “otherly” figures are not only familiar because of their size and skin colours but also because we grew up with them in children’s books, mangas, or even museum collections; they are, moreover, fascinating for us. The human and animal connection seems to be deeply ingrained in history.

Patricia Piccinini’s works instantly touch us, sometimes in loving ways but at other times also in uncanny and scary ways: because they could be real, because they are of natural size, colour, and have many features that we know from the contexts of humans, animals, or plants. They are of different ages: babies, children, grown-ups, and older creatures. They smile, they hug, they care for each other. And here is where this essential idea of hope starts: that these figures are not alone, that they very well understand their differences, their weaknesses, but also their co-dependencies and mutual reliance. The beauty of empathy, of caring, of understanding and tolerating differences. It’s not the survival of the fittest but the fact that the most understanding ones live together which Patricia Piccinini emphasises.

Connected with this, Patricia Piccinini is also interested in the idea of customisation, not only in her creatures but also in her paintings and wall tiles. Customisation, for her, is connected with protection and care—the extra care and love one gives to something special. When we have a special relation to something or need to use something in a special form, we customise the product, before or after they are produced. Before production, for instance, one might decide which colour a new car should have or what kind of buttons one would like for a tailored jacket. After production, one might alter a standard suit so it fits better; or with a motorbike one might add a lovingly airbrushed artwork.

For reasons of beauty and health, humans have had a long history of customising their own bodies: tattoos, bound feet, stretched necks are only some examples from around the world. Prenatally altering genetic information, however, especially directly editing the baby’s genome before birth, is still highly risky and controversial. To current knowledge, this had only been successfully performed in Shenzhen in 2018 and 2019; the news was announced at a conference at the University of Hong Kong in 2019 — to a huge outcry, which was followed by new laws and regulations concerning pre-birth gene-manipulation.

Developing in parallel to two or three decades of heated speculations and discussions about gene manipulation, Patricia Piccinini’s sculptures present us with various views on the consequences of such developments. Yet she withholds judgement. For her, these alterations and customisations cannot be seen as isolated events; there are always co-dependencies and interdependencies between different actors. This can be between humans and objects, like in her spray-painted paintings customised by professional car decorators; maybe more urgently, this can be newly formed relations between two different creatures. Such bonding experiences of love and care for each other are what Piccinini most emphasises.

In much of her work, what Piccinini is doing is to re-introduce an emotional dimension into our rational narratives, a component we have always had present in most art forms like literature, theatre, or film, but which somehow fell out of favour in our postmodern art, where in recent decades, ideas, concepts, and manifestos became—often for pertinent reasons, I might add— more important than the emotional. Like the co-dependencies we experience in many of Patricia Piccinini sculptures, that co- existence between these different modalities in art forms can exist together. One could additionally argue that the emotional or conceptual aspects are only entry points to something that can and often is leading towards the opposite direction. In art history, for instance, the strong bodily reaction to a Barnett Newman field painting and the admiration of craft in the theatrics of a Richard Serra sculpture are just some examples where works can be read or experienced in many different ways. On some level, Patricia Piccinini’s art is as conceptual and dry as Abstract Expressionist paintings are emotional and haptically attractive, connecting them to our feelings. It’s this oscillation between accessible artworks that are becoming conceptual (and vice versa) that often makes today’s art so different, so appealing.

Finally, I would like to add that, since the opening of Tai Kwun, it has been important for us to exhibit art that honours the fact that Tai Kwun Contemporary’s art galleries are located in the former Victoria Prison, a historic site of law and order. In the past few years we have presented many exhibitions that on one level or another deal with the relationship of the individual body and intellect towards greater structures of power and vice-versa. It is my hope that most of these exhibitions have raised more questions than they have given answers, and have furthermore touched our visitors in ways they did not expect – good, neutral, or challenging – sparking fruitful dialogues between different people and different ways of thought. This dialogue, this communication, or at least the mutual fondness or affection is what is crucial: we cannot have it alone, we need to have it with different people and creatures, we are all interdependent. We have to respect this interdependence and difference to better develop in these uncertain times with all the new biological and technological issues we face.