Karen Piddington - artist

My art practice is a speculative enquiry into the notions of ‘becoming-animal’ and animality. I look for moments of proximity and attunement with nonhuman animals, stepping into their worlds not from a separate human position but from a position of animality, where processes of transformation and becoming unfold. Through encounters in gardens, sheep fields, and coastal spaces, I interweave the real and the imagined, the rational and the intuitive, to create non-identities and paradoxical scenes.

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I use ambiguity, absurdity and humour to test and blur human–nonhuman boundaries and to question the ways in which we relate to other species. My work explores how interspecies relationships might be reimagined beyond hierarchy and control, opening possibilities for more connected forms of coexistence. We cannot escape our humanness, but the work asks what might happen if we loosen its boundaries and become open to other ways of being.

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Using both a playful and serious intent, I create immersive environments that invite viewers into encounters with nonhuman animals. My aim is not to offer fixed meanings but to open spaces in which perception may shift, allowing viewers to enter unfamiliar worlds and imagine multispecies relations differently.

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Through film, sound, video performance, and assemblage, my work is given space to establish its own realities and kinships. Nonhuman animals feature as protagonists. I spend extended periods of time in close proximity to animals, filming within the environments they inhabit. The camera becomes an extension of my eyes, ears, and, to some extent, my sense of touch, shaping encounters and drawing viewers across the human–nonhuman boundary into a web of multispecies interdependencies.