Hybridity is an integral part of Payes’ artistic practice were Payes has combined her foundational photographic work with digital imagery. Payes also continues to blur categorical distinctions. The ambiguity of the Crypto Emergence Series – both humanoid, warrior and nurturer comprise of Payes’s new bronze sculptures, photographed in her studio against a pitch-black background, using soft lighting to elucidate the sculptures to emulate undulating islands, vanishing when foreground and background reunite into the darkness. Underscoring this theme of mutability, Payes has emphatically stated that, “Humanity is in constant interaction with the environment, the two cannot be separated.”

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