LAURINA PAPERINA, IT

Laurina Paperina (Italian, b. 1980, Rovereto, Italy). She lives in Duckland, a small town in the Universe and has shown her works internationally, including group exhibitions in private galleries, art foundations, museums and public spaces. She has also participated in festivals and art fairs.

Working predominantly with the imaginary of contemporary heroes, Laurina Paperina pokes fun at art and life in her morbidly humorous paintings, drawings, installations and animations.
She describes herself as “a duck with a human head and vice versa...” who, “doesn’t want to make serious art”. Instead, she ridicules the self-importance endemic to the artistic enterprise, as well as politics, religion and pop culture, through her cartoonish caricatures.
In her multi-part project titled "How to Kill the Artists" (begun 2007), Paperina pays twisted homage to modern and contemporary art stars like Picasso, Marina Abramovic and Takashi Murakami by killing them with their own work. Murakami, for example, is eaten alive by one of his maniacally grinning flowers while Abramovic performs herself to death.
The motivation of her relentless abuse is a wild sense of humor, a commentary on contemporary forms of media, and a successful attempt to make light of the all too often serious pretensions of today's art world. Despite their often gruesome acts, her child-like characters are disarming and full of wit.