Decadent, 2025

Augustina Droze  

In “Decadent" an exotic birds gather in a dense, rhythmic arrangement. Their plumage glows with intense reds, deep blues, and brilliant yellows. Each creature acts as a silent narrator within a dreamlike scene. The composition draws from Rococo traditions of abundance. Augustina Droze blends Eastern and Western influences with precision. A decorative ceramic vessel sits nestled among the foliage, hinting at a cultural dialogue. The background suggests a gilded, classical interior. This creates a tension between structured elegance and wild, natural energy. Every brushstroke emphasises the bewilderment of a beautiful, foreign world. The painting transforms a simple gathering of fauna into a modern mythology. Light dances across the feathers and petals, adding a sense of depth and luxury. The final effect is one of immersive opulence, where nature and artifice merge into a single, vibrant vision. The scene concludes with the delicate curve of a white cockatoo perched on the right edge.

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).