YOU OR ME

This series is an ongoing artistic investigation into identity and belonging through the creation of human-animal hybrid organisms. The series approaches identity as relational rather than fixed: we are shaped by the environments, relationships, communities and territories we inhabit. Family, home, partnership, profession or place can constitute ecologies of belonging that leave a physical trace on the body. Animal features such as horns, fur, wings or shells become morphological markers of these transformed identities.

Initiated in 2023, the series has evolved from an exploration of hybrid figures into a broader investigation of the mechanisms of belonging. A second phase incorporates testimonies from seven women, whose experiences and identifications with particular animals inform the creation of new organisms. The project takes the form of a fictional natural history archive, combining drawing with a taxonomic language in which habitat, behaviour, adaptation, relationships and conservation status are applied to human experience.

Taxonomy becomes a way of questioning rather than fixing identity. The organisms occupy an unstable territory between human and non-human, individual and community, species and variation. As environments change, species may adapt, transform or disappear; likewise, identities are continually reshaped by the relationships that sustain them. You or Me explores the tension between the need to belong and the loss of singularity that belonging can entail.