Hybrid Monster is a drawing and collage work created by fragmenting and recombining two kinds of imagery: animal forms historically used to insult women and enforce obedience, and nude images of women sexualised through the male gaze. Across many cultures, women who resisted social norms have been compared to animals or labelled as monsters, witches or abnormal beings. The work reclaims and subverts these images of objectification and stigma, transforming them into a new body charged with excess, vitality and agency. The Hybrid Monster challenges the norms and hierarchies imposed on women’s bodies and symbolises freedom and disobedience.
In making the collage, I avoided the simple substitution of a woman’s head with an animal’s. Instead, I disrupted the familiar divisions between head, torso and limbs to create a body that cannot be reduced to a single species, gender or function. Images once used as instruments of oppression are reconstructed as a body with renewed agency and vitality. The halo placed on the monster’s body questions who is recognised as sacred and worthy, and who has historically determined those standards. The vagina dentata motif is similarly reclaimed from a projection of fear onto female bodily power and transformed into a symbol of physical agency: the ability to protect one’s body and act for oneself.
The background collage focuses on patriarchal power and iconoclasm. Portraits of historical, religious and political figures associated with systems that constructed and reinforced obedience as a virtue are dismantled, so they no longer reproduce individual identity or sacred hierarchy. Faces, bodies, symbols and ornaments become fragmented abstract patterns, leaving only residual traces of authority after its structures have been broken apart. As figures once positioned at the centre of power are pushed into the background, the Hybrid Monster emerges in the foreground as a force that disrupts established hierarchies and patriarchal structures.
The Hybrid Monster is constructed as a three-dimensional relief on a flat surface. This shift suggests a body once confined to representation and subjected to the gaze of others projecting beyond the surface, gaining physical volume and occupying space. No longer confined to the background, it comes forward with its own agency and appears as a self-defined subject.
Hybrid Monster is a drawing and collage work created by fragmenting and recombining two kinds of imagery: animal forms historically used to insult women and enforce obedience, and nude images of women sexualised through the male gaze. Across many cultures, women who resisted social norms have been compared to animals or labelled as monsters, witches or abnormal beings. The work reclaims and subverts these images of objectification and stigma, transforming them into a new body charged with excess, vitality and agency. The Hybrid Monster challenges the norms and hierarchies imposed on women’s bodies and symbolises freedom and disobedience.
In making the collage, I avoided the simple substitution of a woman’s head with an animal’s. Instead, I disrupted the familiar divisions between head, torso and limbs to create a body that cannot be reduced to a single species, gender or function. Images once used as instruments of oppression are reconstructed as a body with renewed agency and vitality. The halo placed on the monster’s body questions who is recognised as sacred and worthy, and who has historically determined those standards. The vagina dentata motif is similarly reclaimed from a projection of fear onto female bodily power and transformed into a symbol of physical agency: the ability to protect one’s body and act for oneself.
The background collage focuses on patriarchal power and iconoclasm. Portraits of historical, religious and political figures associated with systems that constructed and reinforced obedience as a virtue are dismantled, so they no longer reproduce individual identity or sacred hierarchy. Faces, bodies, symbols and ornaments become fragmented abstract patterns, leaving only residual traces of authority after its structures have been broken apart. As figures once positioned at the centre of power are pushed into the background, the Hybrid Monster emerges in the foreground as a force that disrupts established hierarchies and patriarchal structures.
The Hybrid Monster is constructed as a three-dimensional relief on a flat surface. This shift suggests a body once confined to representation and subjected to the gaze of others projecting beyond the surface, gaining physical volume and occupying space. No longer confined to the background, it comes forward with its own agency and appears as a self-defined subject.
Hybrid Monster is a drawing and collage work created by fragmenting and recombining two kinds of imagery: animal forms historically used to insult women and enforce obedience, and nude images of women sexualised through the male gaze. Across many cultures, women who resisted social norms have been compared to animals or labelled as monsters, witches or abnormal beings. The work reclaims and subverts these images of objectification and stigma, transforming them into a new body charged with excess, vitality and agency. The Hybrid Monster challenges the norms and hierarchies imposed on women’s bodies and symbolises freedom and disobedience.
In making the collage, I avoided the simple substitution of a woman’s head with an animal’s. Instead, I disrupted the familiar divisions between head, torso and limbs to create a body that cannot be reduced to a single species, gender or function. Images once used as instruments of oppression are reconstructed as a body with renewed agency and vitality. The halo placed on the monster’s body questions who is recognised as sacred and worthy, and who has historically determined those standards. The vagina dentata motif is similarly reclaimed from a projection of fear onto female bodily power and transformed into a symbol of physical agency: the ability to protect one’s body and act for oneself.
The background collage focuses on patriarchal power and iconoclasm. Portraits of historical, religious and political figures associated with systems that constructed and reinforced obedience as a virtue are dismantled, so they no longer reproduce individual identity or sacred hierarchy. Faces, bodies, symbols and ornaments become fragmented abstract patterns, leaving only residual traces of authority after its structures have been broken apart. As figures once positioned at the centre of power are pushed into the background, the Hybrid Monster emerges in the foreground as a force that disrupts established hierarchies and patriarchal structures.
The Hybrid Monster is constructed as a three-dimensional relief on a flat surface. This shift suggests a body once confined to representation and subjected to the gaze of others projecting beyond the surface, gaining physical volume and occupying space. No longer confined to the background, it comes forward with its own agency and appears as a self-defined subject.
