Originally from ÅŒtautahi (Christchurch), Maia Patterson is an artist residing in Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington). Currently completing her BFA with Honors, Maia Patterson’s practice reflects on the experience dealing with anxieties surrounding death and abjection through the grotesque, the body, and the animalistic nature of the human. As of current contemplative, ontological body of work, In Extremis reflects on what it is to be in states of fear and horror in the contemporary world. The theory of ‘becoming-animal’ being a critical aspect, the becoming is the act of transcending the body into flesh. Her current works are beginning to conjure of aspects of the human condition, our innate mode of survival and self-preservation, but also the changing of western attitudes toward death. Through anomalous creatures’ imitative of avian beginnings, her paintings explore the push and pull of the grotesque. Repurposing classical motifs as abstractions, her visual language develops through experimental painterly and sculptural methods where dark decaying landscapes and figures emerge.