With the series Entre-nous (or Between Us), 2016, Karine Payette takes a walk on the wild side. Part of a larger multi-media body of work shown earlier this year at Art Mûr, the photographs speak directly to the artist’s current preoccupation with the nature of human-animal relationships — the knotty interrelationships of control, intimacy, violence and domestication that subtly occur between species. They take us to a strange world of interspecies contamination with their depiction of the slow encroachment of fur, scales and feathers onto human skin. The transferences are not immediately noticeable, but eerie once registered. We are reminded of fairy tales, and horror and science fiction movies, where the veneer of civilization — as thin as our skin — is too easily outstripped by our animal instincts.

Montreal-based Payette holds a MFA from UQAM. Her works have been displayed in solo exhibitions at the Galerie de l’UQAM Le lieu, Centre en art actuel in Quebec City, Maison de la culture du Plateau-Mont-Royal. She has also participated in group exhibitions, including the 31st International Symposium of Contemporary Art of Baie-Saint-Paul, and in the inaugural exhibition of the Centre Bang in Chicoutimi. Later in 2016, her work will appear in solo shows at L’Écart, Lieu d’art actuel, Abitibi-Témiscamingue, and the Centre d’exposition Raymond-Lasnier in Trois-Rivière.

Images courtesy the artist and Art Mûr, Montreal.