Erupt, 2026

Augustina Droze  

“Erupt" captures a moment of surreal intensity: the central figure, a bird adorned with intricate blue and white patterns, recalls the elegance of fine porcelain. Surrounding it are vivid pink flamingos. They move with a graceful yet chaotic energy. Pearls flow like liquid through the air. These shimmering spheres create a bridge between the creatures. They spill across the floor in a lavish tide. The setting evokes a grand hall. Soft light descends from a dome above. Every detail speaks of abundance and contradiction. The scene blends Eastern aesthetics with Western opulence. It feels like a modern myth. The composition balances a sense of fragility with explosive movement. The artist, Augustina Droze, transforms animals into symbolic narrators. This creates a dreamlike atmosphere where the exotic becomes tangible. The gaze is drawn to the tension of the floating pearls. Each pearl adds to the Rococo-inspired richness. The artwork concludes in a sea of iridescent white beads.

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).