Born in Italy, Paola Pivi is a contemporary artist working with sculpture, video, photography, performance and installation. In her alternate Alaskan realm, Pivi’s iconic bears are covered in an unlikely coat – feathers –, practice yoga, and even dance together. Infused with human habits, her cast of wild animals result in vibrant and brightly-colored sculptures that look more like charming cartoons than the fearsome beasts of the Alaskan wild. Pivi uses commonly identifiable figures and adds a whimsical and highly recognizable twist, in the shape of a color, a material or a scale alteration, to challenge the viewer’s perception and relation to his own cultural references. In the case of airplanes, the artist plays with their natural position, inverting them upside down from their operational state. Pivi received the Golden Lion at the 1997 Venice Biennale for her inverted installation of a fighter jet.
Her art is held in prominent public collections such as the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Maxxi Museum in Rome, or the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne.
