Patricia Piccinini

‘Doubting Thomas’ is a term that is used to describe a sceptic, someone who refuses to believe without direct physical evidence. It originates from a passage in the Bible’s Gospel of John, in which one of Jesus’ twelve apostles, Thomas, doubts Christ’s resurrection but is appeased when Jesus invites him to put his finger into the wound on his chest. A compelling painting by Caravaggio (1573–1610), Doubting Thomas (The Incredulity of Saint Thomas), 1602–1603, captures the moment of Thomas probing his finger into the wound of Christ.

Patricia Piccinini’s Doubting Thomas, 2008 captures the artist’s interest in themes of evolution, the changing nature of the environment and our relationships with it, and the blurred boundaries between the technological and natural world.