ABSTRACT
The avant-garde movement of surrealism has arguably paved the way for emerging ideas in contemporary scholarship concerning entangled relations between humans, animals, plants, trees, land and water. Surrealists challenged the supremacy of the human and opened up the possibility for understanding that ‘human’ qualities actually exist in many other forms of life, and even in non-living objects. It was women surrealists in particular who were concerned with environmental issues. They include Leonora Carrington and Leonor Fini whose paintings and fiction are replete with plant and animal imagery, including an array of peculiar hybrid creatures – human/ animal/vegetable/mythological beings. The chapter discusses the resonance here with multispecies scholarship and argues for the importance of creative thinking in response to the dire environmental challenges that are unfolding and changing landscapes. It draws on a creative arts workshop that took place at a local community farm in Lancashire, UK. Led by artists and puppet designers, this involved participants reusing a range of materials to create their own hybrid creatures in response to the marshy landscape of the flood-prone farm. These creatures have stories to tell, and warnings to usher, about entanglements between humans, animals and (watery) landscapes.
