I really panicked for a moment when our email address started to be flooded with a photo of a human-dog hybrid – an adult hybrid dog feeding some younger hybrid animals, something claimed to be an abomination and the result of too many lab tests.
The image, clearly disturbing due to the implications it would trigger if it was true, soon became everybody’s main discussion topic but, even though it looks real and there might be a few people ready to swear that they saw the hybrid with their own eyes, it’s nothing but a sculpture. It’s art, folks!
Let me say that again: the human-dog hybrid photo you get in your e-mail (or see on whatever website) is NOT that of a real, living and breathing hybrid! Remember that we’re living in an era where computer technology is very advanced, just as it is the case of everything else and some very creative minds can come up with art that is lifelike, but still not real.
The sculpture, called The Young Family, has been designed by artist Patricia Piccinini and it has a strange background behind it, trying to prove somehow that “we are all a family”: us, humans and our best friends – the dogs.
Of course, the way of showing that to the world is a bit controversial, but at least now the artist has the exposure she probably only dreamed of having when she started to work on her human-dog hybrid sculpture (pictured above)
This sculpture was part of a larger Australian installation called “We are family”. It is made of silicon and, as you can see for yourself in the image, is incredibly well done and could fool anybody that it’s real.
However, it is NOT! Here is what an Australian Council of Arts member says about the human-dog hybrid sculpture and its author:
Piccinini’s works animate the promise and the perils of the runaway scientific developments that pervade our time, said the member, Jane Silversmith. Her art embodies our dreams – dreams of perfect children, of perfect health, of life disease-free, and articulates the value of difference and uncertainty in human life.
It’s obvious that I look at art differently since I can’t connect the words of Jane Silversmith with the human-dog hybrids I see in the image… but what do you think about it?
Do you see the “perfect” world it wants to describe or it’s something that you just consider disturbing, like all the readers who sent it over did (when they actually thought it was real)?
Art comes in various shapes and via various channels nowadays and with so many people living in this world, it’s almost a guaranteed fact that some will appreciate specific forms of art, while others won’t.
In the end, what matters the most is that creativity abounds and artists try to deliver things that have never been seen before, even if they are a bit controversial. No harm done!