“We are not animals” We like to tell ourselves that. That we are something else. That we stand above the rest. But sometimes we excuse ourselves by saying we can't hold back an impulse. That lobsters, or whatever, do the same. We are hypocrites. I don't know if the rest of the animals carry that same hypocrisy. What I do know is that we are animals. Of another kind, like the lion or the dragonfly. Because when I say animal I make no distinction between insect, mollusk, or mammal. We are living, sentient beings. Like the rest. This series is about that. About the mix we want to make between beings. Out of cowardice. Out of ego.

Each piece has an animal head. A horse, a beetle, a monkey, a platypus. The head is drawn in more detail, trying to show that it is alive, that it is connected to the rest of its environment. Perfect. Beautiful. Unrepeatable. It is the animal being an animal, without asking permission.

From the middle down, the body disappears and a symbol of ours appears. Human. A lightning bolt. A stroke. A fleur de lis. A question mark. Signs we invented to name power, nobility, doubt. To put everything into little boxes. We stick our icon onto the animal because we can't stand it being only an animal. We humans love to define.

We use animals as a coat of arms, as a flag, as a brand, as a mascot. We put them inside our symbols and at the same time we swear we are nothing like them. Quite the contradiction. On the line where the head ends and the icon begins there is a seam. That seam is the foundation of the lie.

Nature never needed our system to exist. We think we are the point of it all. It drives us crazy to accept that we are just one more branch. That we are animals. That no decoration changes a thing.