Sonya Dyer: hybrida composita
04 Mar 2025 - 01 Jun 2025
10am-5pm Tuesday-Sunday and selected bank holidays
What will the waters of Plymouth Sound look like in the future? In the wake of a global climate catastrophe, can we imagine which creatures will survive and how they will adapt? This new sculpture by artist Sonya Dyer imagines a creature found in Plymouth’s waters many centuries from now.
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hybrida composita is a hybrid sea creature, created by Dyer after she studied The Box’s critically endangered and near extinct marine specimens, all of which were collected, documented and preserved by scientists over a century ago.
Dyer is an artist and writer from London and a Somerset House Studios Resident. Her practice explores where the centre is located within fictional narratives of the future. She was a finalist for the Arts Foundation Futures Award 2021, and is an alum of the Whitney Museum of American Art: Independent Study Program.
Dyer’s practice explores questions about survival in a future world affected by ecological disaster. hybrida composita features a display case designed to mimic the traditional displays found in the collections, inviting us to think about how museums preserve, catalogue and exhibit the past.
When I first visited The Box, I was drawn to the natural history collections, not only because of what was on display, but because of the way they're displayed. I was thinking a lot about what a museum does, and what a permanent collection does. It keeps things in one space and holds them for as long as the institution exists. I began to think about this idea of permanence and what that means in a landscape that's ever-changing. That led me to this idea of time travel.
In a way, keeping something permanently in a building is also an invitation to time-travel. We get to visit these objects and we're transported to the past. What can an object do within that context? And what would it be to create an object that is completely new? That led to me wanting to bring these forms together into something that doesn't exist, cannot exist, but which has been brought into existence as an art object.
Sonya Dyer, artist
hybrida composita by Sonya Dyer was commissioned by the University Arts London 20/20 Decolonising Arts Institute. The Box is one of 20 partners that has participated in this ambitious three-year programme which has combined artist residencies with artistic commissioning at scale. 20/20 has brought together 20 emerging artists of colour and 20 UK public art collections, leading to 20 new permanent acquisitions. The programme has been funded by the Freelands Foundation, Arts Council England and UAL.
Image credit
All images © Sonya Dyer. Photographs by Pheonix Tanner.