Anelle Beumer

VIRTUAL TOUR

ARTIST CATALOGUE

The Age of Hybrids

In this body of work, I explore the tension between the natural and the artificial, the familiar and the alien. Through hyper-realistic drawings and large calico sheets stained with salt, water, and alcohol, I create dream-like landscapes that result from both chance and control. Using hybrid creatures, I aim to intrigue viewers and direct their attention to environmental degradation, technological estrangement, and the future we are building. The intention of this project isn’t to find an answer or solution, but to invite awareness, empathy, and responsibility. 

This project responds to a growing sense of separation, portraying how human influence leaves behind hybrid forms where the boundaries between the natural and the artificial have blurred. Viewers must slow down, look closely, and engage attentively with the surfaces to discover the creatures hidden within. The encounter becomes a small moment of wonder and unease: do these beings belong here? Are they adapting, lost, or surviving? These abstract landscapes evoke a world in flux — familiar yet unknowable, both natural and unnatural. The hybrid creatures, inspired by Bosch and Breughel, are symbolically made up of human, animal, machine, technology, and nature. Their combinations hint toward different social, environmental, and hierarchal problems such as exploitation, modification, extinction, and technology infiltration. 

The use of AI has become an important element of this project since our growing relationship with it can be deemed another hybrid form. AI, human-made but mechanically driven, has become a natural part of our daily lives. Just as my ink landscapes emerge from the interaction of water, fabric, alcohol, and salt (a negotiation between agency and chance), my AI-generated images are the result of negotiation between human input and machine process. Both material and digital hybrids resist the myth of the “pure” author, showcasing the collaborative and unpredictable conditions of making. Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto grounds this project in theory. Haraway introduces the cyborg as a metaphor for the evolution of humanity and the rejection of purity. She encourages humanity to embrace hybridity and to use it with responsibility. Her insistence that the cyborg is without innocence — a metaphor for a humanity that cannot pretend to be pure or untouched — resonates deeply with my work. Responsibility originates from accepting hybridity and using it for good. Geoffrey Hinton’s 2025 interview with The Diary of a CEO extends this conversation, warning that AI’s rapid development may outgrow human control. His reflections highlight the same contradiction that drives my practice: fascination with technological possibility balanced by awareness of its danger. To live responsibly with technology is to acknowledge both its potential and its risks, and to remain answerable for the futures it shapes. 

Ultimately, this project is not about despair but about attention. It accepts that purity is impossible and that we already live as hybrids. Within this entanglement lies both the threat of alienation and the possibility of care. My work seeks to make that condition visible, inviting viewers to slow down, notice, and extend empathy to beings that do not exist, yet mirror the fragile worlds we already inhabit, an opportunity of responsibility.