Aziz + Cucher
Chimera #6, 1999, c-print mounted on aluminum, 60" x 30"
The first line of Ovid's Metamorphoses reads "My purpose is to tell of bodies which have been transformed into shapes of a different kind." Recent advances in genetic science and the confluence of computer, bio- and nano-technologies have opened up the possibility of a completely mutable universe, providing metamorphoses wholly different from those in Ovid. While his beings transformed themselves from one known form into another known form, we are poised to be transformed from known forms into unknown forms. Whether these forms would be monstrous or beautiful, alluring or repulsive, has been one of the questions at the center of our work in the past few years. Mythological monsters such as the Sphinx, Medusa, or the Chimera have traditionally embodied the mysteries of the unknown as well as the contradictions of that which is known, hence their hybrid nature and incomprehensible shape. Our work is essentially a search for a kind of visual poetics that brings our time of transformations into the space of myth.
