Do all things have an innate nature? The posthuman, the trans- and the animal connect through contamination, empathy, and becoming. Some claim transsexual transformation is “unnatural”, but most do not take issue with the less than nature of technological augmentation in their own daily life. Changing and becoming are integral parts of the natural world. Plants and animals evolve as part of their nature. When ideas of what constitutes humanity are contaminated by bodies that do not fit the norm, humanity begins to empathize with the expansiveness of the non-human animal. A Posthumanism that rejects the the human as the supreme being on earth is able to absorb the animetaphor and expand what it means to be human in combination of technological augmentation. 

​

Blurring the lines between these three themes, artist Anthromorph creates masks and prosthetics that mutate their body into something neither human nor animal. Most of their videos depict the artist wearing a prosthetic that obscures their face in a natural or decayed industrial setting. The masks vaguely resemble hairless, abstracted mammals or reptiles with naked, seemingly human flesh. In the videos, the artist's body fluctuates between stillness and preening, scratching, stretching, or other animal-like movements. The artist's body is typically semi or fully nude in these works, flaunting their ambiguous trans identity by refusing to hide their bulge.  The artist performs and embraces their animalistic monstrosity. Anthromorph’s work connects the Posthuman Cyborg, the Transsexual, and the Animal because of how the artist hybridizes the trans body with the animal and the imagined future body as a way to question and probe at the boundaries of the human and the impact of humanity on the environment. 

​

  In an interview on the Bodies in the Post podcast, Anthromorph talks about where they draw connections between the trans body, the alien, and the environment. The artist talks about how humans imagine the alien as a composite of animals we’re afraid of (deep sea creatures, reptiles, bugs), and attribute difference to monstrosity. Visually, Anthromorph’s work is striking and visceral. The prosthetics could be framed as science fiction body horror, but the artist creates empathy for these fabricated creatures through environment, calm movement and acknowledgment of the camera. 

In nature, mutation is rewarded. The transsexual and the animal come together in “a generative tension to envision futures of embodiment, aesthetics, biopolitics, climates, and ethics.” 1 In the current American late capitalist hellscape, transgender mutation or transformation (and general existence)  is often seen as an attempt to destroy the social foundation of “normal” cisgender heterosexual life for all other citizens. When trans people stop attempting to conform and begging to be acknowledged as humans and start utilizing their monstrosity, then that barrier of “normality” starts to be threatened. Those that benefit from the framework of “normality” don’t want the exclusive system that benefits them to destabilize. If trans people are able to live happy, healthy lives outside of the framework of the dominant social system, that system is revealed as apocryphal. 

 

​

 “If nature is unjust, change nature!” 2