Milanese artist Paola Pivi’s vivid polar bears ask profound life questions in an excerpt of Ivan Olita’s playful short that continues our Week of Art. L’Officiel Italia’s Editor-at-Large channels the subconscious of Pivi’s brightly colored sculptures, taking on the role of filmmaker and ventriloquist at Parisian art dealer Emmanuel Perrotin’s Madison Avenue outpost, where the works are currently on show. “It’s definitely more interesting talking to a bear than talking to me,” says Olita. “I felt they had so many things to ask Paola, their creator.” In the past, her animal-inspired installations have variously included a leopard borrowed from a German magician, a pair of zebras in the snowy Alaskan wilderness and an all-white menagerie of horses, cows, ducks and llamas in a warehouse space at the Venice Biennale. Presently residing in India, Pivi lived in Anchorage, Alaska until earlier this year. It is a locale reflected in the form of the feathered neon bears made from urethane foam and plastic on display at the New York exhibition Ok, you are better than me, so what?—so named, says the artist, to provide an “interesting sentence in our competitive society.”

Do you know any stories about bears?
Paola Pivi: An old Inuit tale: Do you know why polar bears are even more dangerous on the ice? Because they cover their nose with their white paw so you only see two black spots, the eyes. It means that you do not recognize them anymore because usually you tell them from seeing three black spots in the snow.

Do you have any animals of your own?
PP:  There was a dog in Alaska who clearly had as much feeling for me as I did for her, but my husband said we could not keep her—if we went to the supermarket, locked her in the car and went shopping, it would not fair on her.

What has been your favorite animal to work with?
PP: Definitely zebras. They just posed for me.