Personal work | Cyrillesaura

Turning tools Collaboration with poet James W. Wood

The Shaman's Mantle collaboration with poet James W. Wood, illustration from Cyrille Saura mixed media

The juggler illustration from Cyrille Saura collaboration with poet James W. Wood

“Our Animal Other” is a bilingual (English/French) project between Scottish writer J.W. Wood and Swiss Artist Cyrille Saura combining poetry and images.

Human civilisation is in crisis – whether environmental social or political. The combinations of image and poem in this project invite viewers to consider intuitive solutions to our crisis, underlining the importance of our shared inheritance with animals and the natural world. We contrast Nature’s wisdom with humanity’s so-called “rational” responses, drawing attention to non-rational, organic and spiritual directions humanity could take to combat alienation, reduce waste and environmental destruction, and activate inclusive dialogue between peoples and communities. The scope of our work moves between the animal kingdom, human impacts on nature and the supernatural, in the sense of the intuitive and that which is perceived, rather than known in a scientific or rational sense.

Text and image combinations from this series, which is a work in progress, have been exhibited in Canada and Switzerland, while individual pieces have been published in the UK and North America.

Cat illustration by Cyrille Saura ink and pencils collaboration with poet James W. Wood

Aries rising, ram illustration by Cyrille Saura, collaboration with James W. Wood