Metabodies is an ongoing series of small sculptures that evoke the hybridity of bodies and the systems they inhabit. Kate Casanova uses materials, such as fungi, bioplastics, video and industrial materials, to create abstract forms that bleed beyond borders, slide over edges and seep through cracks. The sculptures propose a slippery definition of the human in which the body is both inside and outside, singular and multiple and ever changing.

Casanova’s abstract sculptures express hybrid bodies that defy categories, such as human/nonhuman, organic/synthetic and self/other. Western culture typically imagines a human being to be a single organism with a distinct inside and outside when, in fact, our bodies are ever-changing anthro/microbial/fungal systems that shape, and are shaped by, our surroundings. Our bodies are pluralistic and in process, and they change in relation to physical forces such as gravity, energy and entropy, as well as societal forces like social media, global industry and political power.