Will and Desire, 2026

Augustina Droze  

In “Will and Desire", a surreal banquet unfolds in a display of opulent excess. A blue bull looms over the scene. Its form is textured and dense. Beside it, a white lion rests with a gaze of quiet intensity. These figures exist within a dreamlike landscape where Eastern and Western influences collide. The composition echoes the abundance of the Rococo period. 
Vibrant creatures populate the table. Pink and orange rabbits mingle with small rodents. They feast upon a lavish spread of oysters and pearls. The colours are saturated and electric. Every surface vibrates with detail. 
Animals are used here as symbolic narrators. They translate complex human emotions into a visual mythology. The tension between the predatory and the passive creates a narrative of contradiction. It is a reflection on the exotic and the bewildering nature of existence. The painting captures a moment of suspended desire. The gaze is drawn to the intricate textures of the fur and the shimmer of the shells. A golden table supports the weight of this fantastical feast. The scene concludes with a scattering of oysters across the foreground.

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).