We are all lichens

Digital photographs / multiple exposure digital photographs / digital projections.
Created for MA Arts & Ecology module “Beyond Human”, Dartington Arts School, 2022.

An investigation into the possibility of collaboration with the more-than-human. An in-depth “getting to know” lichens, and a consideration of what we can learn from them and their symbiotic, unclassifiable nature. The resulting photographs of human skin and lichens represent a blurring of the boundaries between ‘human’ and ‘other’. An illustration of the question - when we are stripped back to our barest elements, are we really that different? 

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The project title is a quote from the paper ‘A Symbiotic View of Life: We Have Never Been Individuals’, by Gilbert, S., Sapp, J. and Tauber, I. (2012) Quarterly Review of Biology, 87(4), pp. 325-341.