For the upcoming edition of Artissima 2025, we present the site-specific project “Undomesticated” by Adriana Proganó for the Present Future section. Through a practice of drawing, painting and sculpture which explores and exposes notions of the hierarchical systems which govern us. Central to the ideology of Proganó’s practice are themes which explore limits and boundaries founded by imposed societal framework structures, through vicarious figures within her both painted and sculptural compositions. Initially, these seemingly audacious characters, frolic through institutions, terrains, mind fields and places, devoid of being cognizant – in turn, characteristically “free” bound. It is within this narrative the artist challenges our perception of our own quotidian struggles within the confines of outer, supposedly invisible laws that guide our existence. The idea of freedom(s) holds a pivotal point from which the artists’ language hales from.

“Undomesticated” presents a series of pictorial paintings which adorn the walls, with a sculptural form in the same narrative. The figures in the compositions are both that of animals; human and non-human. It is this perception of difference of boundaries of understanding that Proganó aims to dissolve, that of what societally distinguishes us from animals. It is within the dichotomy that the artist brings these notions to the foreground of our minds.

Here, the forms seemingly exist in a whimsical utopian harmony, as panthers combs the hair of the head of a human, mannerisms and mimicry are echoed and others playfully engage in fighting, appearing natural and instinctive, learning these intrinsic behaviours essential to their development as knowledge how to interact with the world in the future. There is however and underlying stream of violence, although perhaps this is something inherently learned within our perception, and not that of the intention of the artist.

The seemingly ironic setting of the diorama-esque composition acts metaphorically, in a discourse which alludes to the inharmonious society in which we exist. The humans act almost primordially, free, anarchic, unrestricted, unbound and acting upon their impulses, figure licks a tree while embracing the trunk, is this act one of probing for food, sensation, pleasure or simply because? Proganó’s pieces calls into question the patriarchy in society, the perimeters and ideologies that govern our behaviour, how one should engage with nature, how we control ourselves and our environments, evermore evident in the age of the Anthropocene.

In this path of Proganó’s language panthers reveal themselves to heal a figure strewn across the ground, instead of attacking. Reiterating the discourse of the artist that within this realm the symbiotic relationship is balanced as energies ebb and flow between these entities, seen in the hues of blue circulating similar to that of pulsing stars or supernovas. Proganó further promotes and challenges indoctrinated modes of thought, by identifying the protagonists as androgenous and unclad. In doing so, liberates them from the confines of sexualization, class and gender. The objects themselves in their compositions work as hybrids of sculpture and painting, to create an atmosphere as painting installation.

Proganó has incorporated this amalgam of painting/sculpture and similar contexts previously into her installations, as in the series  “Little Brats, 2023”, in that figures disrupt the behavioural protocols of the controlled space of a museum and bringing into question the systems that exist in these environments, as the characters released themselves from the confines of the two-dimensional canvases to their three-dimensional forms.  As in “Undomesticated”, the “animals” are more “anima”, the artist continues this narrative and potential of existence in law-less places, with unadulterated views, opening new grounds for new conversations and to be released from pre-conceived modus-operandi. The rules are to be re-written or not to be written at all, the perceptions to be re-evaluated and used to create new ideas, free from bias. Free.