Lydia Nobles is a New York-based artist utilizing film, sculpture, and installation to explore gender construction and interspecies relationships.

I create installations and short films to investigate human-animal relationships, gender dynamics, and self-care through the erotic. I use the word erotic as it is explored by Audre Lorde in her 1984 essay, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power.” In her essay, Lorde unfolds the unique power within women as an erotic power that is often confused with the pornographic. To defy this confusion and create my work, I embody a cyborg who harnesses her erotic intuition and defines herself through herself and through the animal-human relationship she shares with her dog Remi, who has been equally distanced. Collaborating with Remi, I seek to shift perceptions of intimacy, the dog’s role as companion, and the female as her own empowered being. Defamiliarization of gender, and the relationship I share with my dog, are amplified through performative actions while slippage may occur between our bodies, the sculptures, and the walls as subsets of my studio or gallery space. This slippage encourages a space for Remi and I to be ourselves in the context of one another and the self as individualized from the white, male patriarchal gaze.