A family of technicolour polar bears, 999 trays of suspended colourful liquid and a 14m inflatable comic cell are Paola Pivi’s proof that serious art can still be seriously fun.
The Italian multimedia artist, who has held exhibitions across the world including Miami, Paris and China, is making her West Australian debut with a blockbuster exhibition at The Art Gallery of Western Australia, featuring two new commissioned works.
The exhibition titled, I don’t like it, I love it, is said to be one of Pivi’s biggest and most ambitious to date — not that she readily admits it.
“Oh, it’s competing with others,” Pivi shrugs humbly while chatting with STM ahead of the exhibition’s opening weekend.
One glance at Pivi’s work reveals how her uniquely provocative yet playful approach has made her one of the world’s most loved and respected contemporary artists. But when it comes to explaining the meaning behind her art, Pivi keeps her cards fiercely close to her chest.
“It would be wrong not to leave (interpretation) open. Who are the artists who don’t leave it open? Shame on them. Who are we to tell you what to think?” she says, while walking beneath a ceiling installation titled: Share, but it’s not fair.
Pivi wants her art to speak for itself, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t prompts for those who look.
Share, but it’s not fair, is composed of 700 handmade knotted pillows made from fabric used for Tibetan Buddhist monk robes — the nation her husband, who names most of her artworks, hails from. Underneath it are wall paintings that read: “Free Humans”, “God, Let Me Hunt”, and “Please Don’t Get a Divorce”.
With hints to the complex relationship between Tibet and China, reaching as far back as the Qing dynasty, it’s obvious that Pivi isn’t afraid to get political with her art — or anything for that matter.
“Everything is political. Every time you use your brain and your mouth and your eyes, it’s political. Every communication between people is political. So therefore, art is political too,” she reflects.
Pivi’s WA debut has allowed her to create two dream artworks her creative brain has been conjuring up for years.
The first, titled Love addict, is an installation of 999 trays of coloured liquid hung individually and functioning similarly to a stained-glass window in AGWA’s rooftop gallery space.
An intentional aspect to this installation is the concept of visitors walking through the space in a consciously delicate manner to avoid touching the artwork, being aware of their every move.
“There’s a sense of suspending disbelief and suspending belief which runs through everything in terms of their physicality and their concepts,” says exhibition curator Robert Cook.
He describes Pivi’s work as “puzzling yet not off-putting”.
“As we attend to this work, we are likely to become aware of our potential to ruin the beauty we find in the world if we are not careful in our movements, and by extension, our impact on what is around us.”
The second of Pivi’s new works to premiere is a 14m inflatable comic strip which swallows almost the entirety of AGWA’s central void area, made in collaboration with illustrator Lincoln Peirce.
Pivi says she’s been wanting to create this piece since 2014, titled: Fortunately, one picture is worth a thousand of these suckers…
It draws from the artist’s early encounter with Italian comic legend Andrea Pazienza, when she was a chemical engineering student in Milan during the early 90s and would spend her study breaks copying his comics.
“I was born into a family where most were engineers, and I was born an artist,” Pivi reflects.
“But art for (my family) was something on the fringes, something useless, something frivolous. It was never put on my plate. I was studying engineering, and I was good at it, but I was very sad.”
The moment of discovery and fascination with Pazienza’s comics changed the trajectory of Pivi’s life, as soon after she dropped out of chemical engineering to attend art college and never looked back.
Pivi wanted to create a work that distilled the feeling of artistic awakening — not by reproducing her own drawings but by using another artist’s work as a celebration of that spark of recognition. She found it unexpectedly in Big Nate, the long-running American comic strip by Lincoln Peirce.
“Satire, I think, is one of the apexes of our human civilisation,” she says.
“(The inflatable) is a homage to the art of comic strip, all of it, not only what happened to me that pulled me out of my life and into art.”
And arguably the most “Instagrammable” element of the exhibition, and what Pivi is best known for, are her technicolour polar bears. Three new bears debut in Perth, each frozen in a playful pose — one even dangling on a trapeze.
Taking three months to construct in Canada and decorated with fluorescent feathers from Italy and Australia, the iconic bears symbolise the connection between humans and the natural world, spotlighting the precarious future polar bears face with climate change.
“The vibrantly coloured feathered bears have long been a popular favourite for art fans around the world who are entranced by their very special expressivity,” says Cook.
“As with much of her work though they equally speak to more serious concerns, about the fragility of the environment in this instance. Their cheerful beauty and tender poses become unexpectedly heart-wrenching when we consider the endangered status of these arctic giants.”
Capturing animals “out of place” is a thematic thread that has run through Pivi’s work for decades. It feels fitting that visitors are greeted by one of her most loved works in the gallery foyer; a surrealist photograph of a boat-bound donkey.
“I presented this work called Untitled (donkey) at the Venice Biennial in 2003. It represents a donkey on a boat shot at dawn on the water of Alicudi, which is an island off Sicily where I used to work and live in those years,” she says.
For Pivi, it seems art and life are inseparable acts of curiosity, and this exhibition is bright, bold and brimming with curiosity — just like she is.
“I live my life as a very excited being. I’m curious, I’m open and I was born that way,” says the joyful disruptor.
After all, in Paola Pivi’s world, the playful and the profound have always gone hand in hand. Perhaps a fluorescent feathered polar bear is just her way of showing us how.
Paola Pivi – I don’t like it, I love it exhibition is at The Art Gallery of Western Australia until April 26, 2026. artgallery.wa.gov.au