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She is hybrid in another sense, too—she is woman and animal—to her their roles are one and the same. It does not matter if the animals in her images truly exist or not, just as it does not matter if she herself—or anyone else in the images—truly exists or not. Sometimes things are more coherent when they are hallucinatory. But in these dreams/hallucinations, she cannot survive without surrendering her own human animacy, and the animal aptly assumes the surrogate position. They express for her, when her own behaviors of feminine stoicism betray her, or do not suffice. The fantastical outward projection of the zodiac beast, or the intimately internalized household pet, morph into her deepest shames and joys, and vice versa.

In the end, the image the hybrid woman produces is, essentially, a synecdoche for the world she exists within. The forms that catalyze each image originate from the real (hybrid) world and are further heterogenized with her impulse towards the subconscious, with her desire to lessen the distinction between her own actions and certain so-called “animalistic” tendencies—and so, the image becomes the world she did not yet realize she (I) was living in.

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