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Hybrid life:

The art of Patricia Piccinini

by Jackie Randles

Patricia Piccinini is a contemporary artist whose troubling depictions of transgenic life portray many of the complex ethical issues around bioengineering, writes Jackie Randles.

You may be familiar with the peculiar, yet loveable creatures that Australian artist Patricia Piccinini created for her 2003 Venice Biennale exhibition We Are Family- also presented earlier this year at the Bendigo Art Gallery in Victoria.

Patricia is interested in the idea that animals, humans, plants, fruit and even yeast are all derived from the same genetic material. That we are, in a sense, one big family is a central theme of her work. We Are Family features a variety of bizarre genetically engineered organisms that are strikingly different to what we know, but at the same time, strangely familiar.

The Young Family. Photo Graham Baring

There's The Young Family: a human sow with primate arms and legs who suckles a litter of adorable human piglets as she lounges on a superbly crafted leather pedestal

(a cross between one of those concrete forms you'd see in a zoo enclosure, and the upholstered interior of a luxury car).

The mother's tarnished skin has the unsightly wrinkles, red blotches, moles and imperfections you might find on your own body. Her hands and feet could belong to your grandfather. Human traits aside, she looks like more or less like a pig - despite the strikingly tender maternal gaze she casts upon her offspring.

The Young Family in some ways refers to xenotransplantation, the process whereby human genes are spliced together with those of animals with the aim of creating cures for disease. This revolutionary process is just a whisper away from becoming available in a clinical setting. Research is already well advanced in the area of artificially breeding animals into controlled environments specifically to create organs for transplant into humans.

It is fascinating to consider what such bioengineered organisms might look like. Even more interesting is to imagine their quality of life. No matter what purpose we may intend for them, such organisms will eventually have lives of their own, especially if they have the ability to reproduce. Will we allow them the right to exist as subjects?

If we create bioengineered creatures to serve specific functions for us, what will become of them when they have fulfilled their purpose? We already breed animals to eat - would breeding animals to create body parts for our own use be different? Should creatures have more rights than we currently afford animals if they contain genetic material that is, in fact, derived from humans? This question becomes far more loaded when we consider that humans share so much genetic material with plant and animal kingdoms.

Think about Dolly, the celebrated cloned sheep who was created after over 270 failed laboratory attempts to achieve a live birth. Scientists feted the fact that she was able to breed in the normal way, despite her own bizarre genesis, but what was her experience of motherhood actually like? Did she posses 'normal' maternal instincts, or was her experience of motherhood different to that of her naturally-bred organic sisters?

By giving her creatures subjectivity and physical features that are recognisably human, Patricia creates emotionally charged scenes that represent familial love, nurturing and caring. In response, a viewer might reflect upon hope: the love of a mother for her sick child, the longing for a cure and the desire for a medical solution, no matter how strange or unnatural it may seem. When the life of one's own family is at stake, does this becomes more important than any advesre impact a bioengineered solution may have on the natural world? Patricia's own position in the work is ambiguous - she presents both sides of the story. This conflict is possibly deepened by her own experience of her mother's death from cancer. Clearly, there are no right or wrong answers - but the love of parents for their children is an overwhelmingly powerful force.

Dolly's story is echoed throughout the exhibition, but particularly in Game Boy Advanced. Two boys at first glance look like normal young teenagers - slouched against a wall, hands in pockets, intently absorbed in their Game Boy. On closer inspection, however, the familiar becomes uncanny: these genetically identical boys are clones and they are obviously prematurely aged.

Game Boy Advanced. Photo Graham Baring

Will they share the same fate as Dolly? She was born old and died at the age of six. Who knows? For now, they have a life. They seem content, and are certainly oblivious to us and what we may think of them and their plight.

Still Life With Stem Cells presents the antithesis of what we'd expect from any living organism created from stem cells. A young girl sits on the floor playing happily with a group of tactile, fleshy blobs of human-like tissue. In some ways it's an idyllic scene - a happy child and her mischievous companions. But what are they? Lumps of indeterminate flesh hover between organs, joints and limbs. This work might ask us to think about stem cell technologies and how we might relate to some of the unwanted consequences of it. Will we accept and love the failures along with the success? Or will we reject them for not being the perfect organisms we set out to create?

Patricia Piccinini with Still Life with Stem Cells. Photo Graham Baring

This confronting work also raises questions about our attitudes towards physical disability, and to the controversial topic of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. While we afford some parents the right to screen embryos for genetic mutations that signal a possibility that the potential child may have a debilitating disease, would we allow the selection of physical attributes that seem more desirable? Given the technology, would we choose to eliminate disability, imperfection and difference all together?

Patricia Piccinini confronts us with difficult and emotional questions about bioengineering. However, despite their woe-begotten appearances, it is heartening that in their own worlds, each creature is presented as having a life of its own - a valued place in which it is accepted and has the capacity to give and receive love.

Learn more about Patricia Piccinini at www.patriciapiccinini.net. Also tune in to Perfect Life, a radio feature about the artist produced by Jackie Randles for ABC Radio National.

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