'I know that art can change the world': paola pivi on freedom, joy, and her AGWA exhibition

"Paola Pivi's exhibition I don't like it, I love it at the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA) brings together one of the most ambitious bodies of work in her thirty-year practice, pairing long-imagined pieces with major new commissions that inhabit the Brutalist architecture of the museum at full scale. Conceived through extended dialogue with AGWA's curatorial team, the show pushes, as Pivi says, 'the entire boundary,' expanding her ongoing investigation of joy, urgency, and the evolving conditions of freedom today."

"Across the exhibition, on view until April 26th 2026, Pivi's signature balancing of the playful and the existential becomes a framework for rethinking how we inhabit the world. Her fluorescent feathered polar bears, joyful in movement yet tied to global warming, which she insists on calling 'global warming rather than climate change', emerge from what she describes as 'respect for life' and 'treasuring movement and the joy to be here.' Her approach dissolves the distinction between delight and responsibility."

"'For me, joy comes from caring about life. It's all connected. There is no separation,' she notes. This belief that art expands perception underpins her entire practice. 'I know that art can change the world because art can change.' Below, designboom speaks with Paola Pivi about the making of I don't like it, I love it, the importance of freedom, and why the 'impossible' is often just the beginning."

Paola Pivi's exhibition I don't like it, I love it at the Art Gallery of Western Australia presents an ambitious thirty-year survey alongside major new commissions scaled to the museum's Brutalist architecture. The show pairs long-imagined works with large-site installations conceived through extended curatorial dialogue. Playful and existential elements coexist, prompting reevaluation of how people inhabit the world. Fluorescent feathered polar bears embody movement and joy while confronting global warming, a term Pivi insists on using. Recurrent themes include respect for life, treasuring movement, the interconnection of joy and responsibility, and a conviction that art can expand perception and effect change.

Read at designboom | architecture & design magazine