My research as well as my creative process on the one hand, revolves around the animal figure in its relationship to art, and on the other hand, around the key-notions of animal anthropomorphism, zoomorphism, metamorphosis, the animal figure and hybridization; constant, iconic and plastic themes of my work. How and why does the artist call forth animals in such a recurrent and diversified manner? How have physical and materiel complementarities, mental analogies as well as exacerbated tensions come into play today, in such a striking fashion between mankind and the animal world? If animals are the off-centered witness of how our societies function, as a distorting and critical mirror, what does its figure reveal when grappling with the art of our beast-like behaviors and of the relationship that we maintain with it? Resorting to concepts emanating from different academic disciplines, in particular, the human sciences, has provided and shed light to the analyses of the works: our own, those of the past and of today. The result being, an utterance density as regards the content of the link which feeds the man-animal pair, whether the situations staged are fictitious or real. The parallel drawn between the methods of plastic expression (imitation, caricature, assemblage, staging) and stylistic devices (metonymy, metaphor, comparison, allegory) within the process listed above is aimed at highlighting the discursive nature of the selected works. Eliciting the animal world within our thesis, thus benefits from a three-fold definition. The animal’s image, which is the reflection and recollection of our humanity, accompanies mankind, as the paradigm – living model or ideal image –, of a certain identity of mankind – its weaknesses, its rebellions, its excesses, its obsessions, etc. In addition, the animal’s figure is also to be understood as a mediator, prevailing over direct criticism and dialogue, and managing to reconcile opposites. Thus invested, the animal’s ambiguous or ambivalent image gives rise to multiplicity, to an extraordinary, artistic and iconographic fertility. Its figures, which challenge the monolithic form, are rarely isolated; they cross over, are mingled, and permeate.
