Symbiosis, or a relationship built between individuals of different species living together, creates an overlapping of lives. Interspecies bonds are born of chance and necessity, but grow beyond their humble beginnings. Animals in these relationships evolve and adapt to rely on each other until connections once unimagined become the keys to survival. Like the nature of symbioses in the biological world, this exhibition focuses on the relationality of shifting shapes. These creatures are shaped by each other and reshape their environments in turn. One thing builds upon another until something new is brought to existence. The relationships highlighted here in this art include that of human and animal, predator and prey, flora and fauna, parent and child, science and story, and life and death.

A relational menagerie, Symbiotic is the debut solo show of artist and author Joelle Cook (she/her). Joelle graduated from the University of Washington with a BA in Interdisciplinary Visual Arts and Creative Writing. Living a life of constant movement has driven her towards a focus on forms that are collections of shapes that create a whole creature. Her art is an exploration of the ways the biological world and the architecture of manmade forms overlap, and how that lends to a new kind of worldbuilding driven by this mix of natural beings and hard shapes.

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