One of the first chimeras or parahumans I made was The Young Family. ((Hybrids)) And that was about the idea that we can now grow human organs in other species. And one of the species that we were looking at, at that time, were pigs. And that’s why The Young Family is sort of based on a pig. ((Once I Had A Pig, The Pig)) And I guess I was interested in their rights — the rights of that creature. Like it’s not where humanity stops and animalness starts. It’s like what are their rights in this situation, and that’s why in the work we see a mother who has given birth and she’s obviously thinking about her children, and what’s going to happen to them. And in that way she’s kind of like beyond our control, in that she has her own destiny, like we can control her. We can cuddle up and use her for spare parts, but we can’t control how she feels.

And that’s the work. That is actually the work. It’s not saying that this is bad, because I think it’s inevitable that we would do that. And in fact I really want that technology to be available to us, because I lost my mother to cancer, and I know that we would have given anything to extend her life, including funding a creature to have a replacement liver. ((The Intruder)) But at the same time I think well, what are the rights of this creature and her offspring and her life?