More from my thesis: Merriam-Webster defines the natural world as “all of the animals, plants, and other things existing in nature and not made or caused by people.” By that commonly accepted definition, there is no more nature. That’s an alarming thought. But what is nature, or the natural world, now that we have made the entirety of it anthropogenic? With the continued synthesizing of what we recognize or regard as the natural and the artificial how will flora and fauna continue to adapt and change? How will we? Or maybe a better question is how have we historically mutated the living world, including ourselves, and into what are we transforming? As a potential answer to that question I am looking toward chimerism. The chimeric body is a single organism that contains cells from two or more separate individuals. This could sound like Victorian monstrosity redux but I’m talking about shared ecology, the ecology of cells and bodies. I challenge Enlightenment-era binary concepts of nature and culture by working in the expanded fields of painting, sculpture, and material studies. In my practice, nature and culture are the same just as human or beetle or cat or cow are the same. Materially then a painting is the same as a sculpture is the same as performative installation, all of which are components that make up my work. “Self Portrait as Cryptic Camouflage” concrete, fly fishing feathers, apoxy, reclaimed rabbit furs, synthetic flowers 21"x14"x12" April 2020 Plus: “Future Flower II” Colored pencil and acrylic on paper 12”x9” 2019 . . #grad2020 #laurenlevatocoyne #expandedfield #ooo #darkecology #queerart (at Ferndale, Michigan) https://www.instagram.com/p/B_hy4rklbFn/?igshid=1p1j21rrm8izr
