Pakui Hardware’s visceral sculptures dissect the future of virtual healthcare
At the Baltic Centre for Contemporary art, Lithuanian artist duo Pakui Hardware examine timely themes of robotic and virtual healthcare in an uncanny new installation
At a time when conversations around the quality and accessibility of healthcare are topping the international conversation, Pakui Hardware’s deep sculptural exploration of robotic and virtual medical care has come at an unnervingly appropriate time.
For their first solo exhibition in the UK, titled ‘Virtual Care’ the Lithuanian artist duo (comprising artists Neringa Cerniauskaite and Ugnius Gelguda) have transformed Baltic’s level two gallery space into an unsettling new world that resembles a clinical surgery suite. Here, all human presence – except for the visitors – has been usurped by technology.
More unnerving still are the transparent thermoformed or resin ‘bodies’ abstracted into sculptural biomorphic shapes. These hover somewhere between biology and technology and leave the viewer wondering whether this is a healthcare utopia or dystopia.
In recent years, Pakui Hardware’s work has explored contemporary medicine, data gathering and healthcare exploitation. Through distinctive material concoctions of glass, artificial fur, textiles, leather, chia seeds, soil, silicone, metal and plastics, they imagine possible futures where material limitations are transcended by fragmenting, repurposing, multiplying and recreating human bodies.
Their 2019 installation titled Underbelly in Leipzig’s Museum der Bildenden Künste comprised an unsettling installation resembling organs, that were in fact coloured-glass sculptures and semi-populated petri-dishes that contained chia seeds.
In the Baltic show, glowing orange and yellow lamp sculptures create an air of warmth and care. These are juxtaposed with the comparably alien, hostile coolness of steel arms that make anthropomorphic, and uncanny reference to a surgeon’s hands. Below, a transparent membrane contains what could be organs. Underneath, black and flesh-coloured fabric is draped over invisible forms – the suggestion of a human body, but not quite. What’s absent is as potent as what’s present.
These pieces are, in part, inspired by 1970s and 1980s paintings by Lithuanian artist Teresė Rožanskaitė – these ‘bodies’ are traces, shells of ‘flesh’, all dictated by technology.
The duo explore the warmth of the human body, and the cold detachment of technology, and ultimately, how these poles are becoming increasingly entwined. They dredge up all the moral mazes humanity faces, in a fear-mongered future filled with designer babies, gene editing, cloning and brain freezing looms. But Pakui Hardware have not conceived this work as a warning. It’s not threat, but intrigue that meets us at the door. Though this feels like uncharted territory, the questions the duo are exploring have credence in real-world futures.
As healthcare in neoliberal systems for poor, remote and marginalised groups increasingly tops the international agenda, technology can be seen as a possible positive solution. In a world where human intervention can fall short, ‘Virtual Care’ is a vision of post-pandemic healthcare systems, framed as an opportunity to turn the most vulnerable towards the increasingly capable hands of technological care.
INFORMATION
Pakui Hardware, ‘Virtual Care’, until 3 Oct 2021, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, baltic.art
ADDRESS
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox
S Shore Rd
Gateshead NE8 3BA
Harriet Lloyd-Smith was the Arts Editor of Wallpaper*, responsible for the art pages across digital and print, including profiles, exhibition reviews, and contemporary art collaborations. She started at Wallpaper* in 2017 and has written for leading contemporary art publications, auction houses and arts charities, and lectured on review writing and art journalism. When she’s not writing about art, she’s making her own.
-
Cult 1960s boutique Granny Takes A Trip gets a sustainable reboot
Founded on King’s Road in 1966, ‘radically creative’ fashion store Granny Takes A Trip is being reimagined for a new generation. Dal Chodha takes a closer look
By Dal Chodha Published
-
Find yourself at Six Senses Kyoto, the brand's breathtaking Japan debut
Six Senses Kyoto opens its doors boasting tranquil, luxurious interiors by Blink Design Group
By Danielle Demetriou Published
-
Shigeru Ban’s mini Paper Log House welcomed at The Glass House
'Shigeru Ban: The Paper Log House' is shown at The Glass House in New Canaan, USA as the house museum of American architect Philip Johnson plays host to the Japanese architect’s model temporary home concept
By Adrian Madlener Published
-
Dorothy Hepworth and Patricia Preece: Bloomsbury’s untold story
‘Dorothy Hepworth and Patricia Preece: An Untold Story’ is a new exhibition at Charleston in Lewes, UK, that charts the duo's creative legacy
By Katie Tobin Published
-
Peter Blake’s sculptures spark joy at Waddington Custot in London
‘Peter Blake: Sculpture and Other Matters’, at London's Waddington Custot, spans six decades of the artist's career
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Sinta Tantra’s sculptures find a historic home at Pitzhanger Manor, UK
Sinta Tantra’s ‘The Light Club of Batavia’ exhibition at Pitzhanger Manor unites her large and small-scale works and explores the duality of beauty and colonialism
By Amah-Rose Abrams Published
-
Oozing, squidgy, erupting forms come alive at Hayward Gallery
‘When Forms Come Alive: Sixty Years of Restless Sculpture’ at Hayward Gallery, London, is a group show full of twists and turns
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Jonathan Baldock’s playful works bring joy to Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Jonathan Baldock mischievously considers history and myths in ‘Touch Wood’ at Yorkshire Sculpture Park
By Anne Soward Published
-
Kerry James Marshall donates first portrait, of Skip Gates, to Fitzwilliam Museum, UK
Kerry James Marshall's portrait of the literary critic, writer and filmmaker is his first of a real, rather than an imagined, sitter
By Amah-Rose Abrams Published
-
Turner Prize 2023 exhibition unwrapped: inside Towner Eastbourne
The Turner Prize 2023 exhibition has opened inside the colourful Towner Eastbourne; delve into the work of the four nominees
By Malaika Byng Published
-
New glass sculpture creates a verdant wonderland at Apple’s Cupertino HQ
‘Mirage’ at Apple Park is the work of Zeller & Moye and artist Katie Paterson, a shimmering array of glass columns that snakes through the grounds of the company’s monumental HQ
By Jonathan Bell Published