Patricia Piccinini

Patricia Piccinini (born 1965 in Freetown, Sierra Leone) is an Australian artist who works in a variety of media, including painting, video, sound, installation, digital prints, and sculpture. Her works focus on "unexpected consequences", conveying concerns surrounding bio-ethics and help visualize future dystopias. In 2003, Piccinini represented Australia at the 50th Venice Biennale with a hyperrealist sculpture of her distinctive anthropomorphic animals. In 2016 The Art Newspaper named Piccinini with her "grotesque-cum-cute, hyper-real genetics fantasies in silicone" the most popular contemporary artist in the world after a show in Rio de Janeiro attracted over 444,000 visitors. Natasha Bieniek's portrait of Piccinini was a finalist for the 2022 Archibald Prize. Early life Piccinini was born in Sierra Leone in 1965 to Teodoro and Agnes Piccinini. She moved to Canberra, Australia when she was 7 years old. She attended Red Hill Primary, Telopea Park High School and Narrabundah College (a secondary college). Academia After high school, Piccinini began studying economics at Australian National University. Later she completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting at the Victorian College of the Arts in 1991. In 2016 she was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Visual and Performing Arts by the University of Melbourne's Victorian College of the Arts and appointed their Enterprise Professor.