Emerging, 2025

Augustina Droze  

In “Emerging", a powerful creature breaks through a lush floral sanctuary. This painting captures a moment of raw intensity. The alligator emerges with an open maw. Its scales shimmer in deep blues and obsidian tones. This predator contrasts sharply with the softness of the surrounding blooms. Vibrant pink peonies and golden petals frame the scene. The composition echoes a Rococo sensibility through its dense abundance. Every brushstroke feels deliberate and energetic. Augustina Droze blends a sense of danger with an exotic beauty. It reflects a world that is simultaneously bewildering and magnificent. The use of colour creates a dreamlike atmosphere. Symbolism plays a key role in this modern mythology. The tension between the wild animal and the delicate flora evokes a feeling of contradiction. This artwork balances primal strength with ornamental elegance. The scene is rendered with a rich texture and a vivid palette. The gaze is drawn to the sharp teeth set against a backdrop of floral serenity.

The contemporary artist Augustina Droze uses animals as symbols to describe her personal lived experiences. Her current body of work explores her life as a foreigner, her gaze upon the world as exotic, beautiful and bewildering. As an expat living in Beijing for the past ten years and currently in Barcelona, Droze's work incorporates elements of East and West. Her swirling, dream-like paintings are colourful and confrontational, brimming with Rococo inspired abundance. She creates her own modern mythology, a storybook land where she is the other in a very other worldly landscape. Droze has exhibited in galleries and museums internationally in numerous shows, notably the Castellani Art Museum, Niagara Falls, New York (2014), Banaras Hindu University as Fulbright Senior Scholar, Varanasi, India (2017), the Beijing US Embassy as Distinguished Art Envoy (2022), London Biennale (2023), Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum (2024) and Carrousel du Louvre (2025).