hybrid/MONSTER

Do you ever have that feeling that you don’t fit in? You don’t belong? Something sets you apart? Maybe this feeling  sent you seeking, travelling, or it’s why you paint, why you dance, take photos, run, write, explore?

Like the sum of your parts add up to more than family, friends or peer expectations? Chris McCandless graduated from university, donated his life savings to charity and walked off to live in the Alaskan wild.

Hybrids are used to strengthen the homogeneous. Grafting different orchids together makes flower nobody has ever seen before. Cross-pollinating makes hardier fruits and vegetables. Hybrid cars are more energy efficient.

The combination of disparate elements is vital for the hybrid. Living a hybrid lifestyle includes being away from your home country, embracing a new culture, a new lifestyle, grafting yourself into a new environment while never forgetting the orchard of your childhood.

Hybrids are monstrous because they upset, challenge, discard the status quo. President Barack Obama is an adult Third Culture Kid who has to constantly reaffirm his identity and nationality as American because he doesn’t easily fit with pre-conceived American notions of identity and race.

The hybrid/monster is multivalent. Marilyn Monroe preferred to be called Norma Jeane by her friends. As Norma she felt real, as Marilyn she was a fantasy.

Not one, or the other. Both. Conjoined. Daisy and Violet Miller were Siamese twins who travelled with P.T. Barnum’s circus and starred as themselves in Tod Browning’s Freaks.

One way to identify a hybrid/monster is through a lack of corporeal consistency. The Joker had a different face before and after the trauma that made him a super-villain. Frida Kahlo covered up her scars and hurt with elaborate dresses, or she’d strip them all away in her paintings to document her wounded body.

There can be a physical marker that codes the hybrid/monster’s difference. Hannibal Lector had six fingers on his left hand. The goddess Kali perpetually sticks out her tongue, daring you to challenge her. Lady Gaga always wears a different costume, a different face.

The hybrid/monster can be sensed even from the shadows. Poison Ivy left behind her traces of vanilla scent. The snakes in Medusa’s hair hissed.

The hybrid/monster can blend in. David Banner only turned into The Hulk when upset. Batman was a businessman by day, avenger by night.  

The hybrid/monster inspires discussion. Rose Deniz, Wisconsin hybrid in Turkey, curated Dialogue 2010 which brought together 10 women from around the world to discuss their hybrid lifestyles in real time. Berkeley native in Istanbul Anastasia Ashman excavates the global niche and our place in it.

Here at hybrid/MONSTER we will explore the hidden sides, the uncomfortable sides, the faces we don’t normally unleash, the emotions we tuck away, the stranger we find in the familiar. We embrace the totality of ourselves, our identities, our visual representations.

Join our carnival of self-exploration, the sideshow of our shifting identities, these exhibits of secret selves.