Piccinini's Young Family

Science is an issue that is omnipresent in today's society, yet hardly an issue I consider an immediate avenue for artistic expression. Aside from the exploration of Freudian psychoanalysis by 20th century artists, most of the ideas presented this week were new to me. I found the questions raised in the text, such as "What responsibility do humans have when they intervene in nature?"(262) to be especially intriguing. The text used Patricia Piccinini's work as a possible reaction to a question of this nature. Piccinini's work is both, technically, boundlessly impressive and horrifying at the same time. "The Young Family" is a bizarre combination of "human eyes and flesh...., primate arms, hands, and snout, floppy ears, and a stubby tail of uncertain animal origins."(264). The look on the mother's face is unnerving, its distressed, tired eyes looking back allows the viewer to create an imagined sense of emotional turmoil.

This emotional response of Piccinini's creature brings back to mind the question of the responsibility humans have for their intervention and also questions about the rights of the resulting consequences. Piccinini's work shows some the possible consequences of combining genes to create neverbeforeseen humanlike animals. If these animals had the ability to communicate on a truly human level and could function in society, would they be accepted as equals? Something this extraordinary immediately dwarfs race and gender issues in my mind. Its difficult to imagine such a thing, and certainly the controversy would be enormous. Obviously animals are not granted the same rights as human, but at what point can a distinction be made between species? How can you justify limiting the rights of animal that is part human, and mentally capable of everything a human is? Just as its been established (somewhat) that varied race and gender identities are not wrong, can it be wrong to not be fully human? It would be even more difficult to determine the point at which these hybrid animals could be comparable to humans. Either way, the problem isn't an impossibility and Piccinini's work offers a startling glimpse of what may be ahead.

image:

http://beinart.org/modules/Word-Press/2007/05/06/patricia-piccininis-anthropomorphic-sculpture/

McDaniel, Craig and Jean Robertson. Themes of Contemporary Art: Visual Art after 1980. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2010. 233-270.