Inspired by altarpieces and the study of anatomy, Suzanne Plomp draws ‘altars for the body’, in which the mutable nature of the body takes centre stage and human and animal forms seem to merge into one another. Plomp builds on Spinoza’s notion of substantia, the idea that everything in nature is made of the same divine substance.

"Suzanne Plomp’s carefully layered pencil drawings break with ideas about hierarchy and binarity in similar ways. Her work Substantia holds no space for speciesism, the idea that humans are above animals and lead superior lives. In her anatomical drawings from the series Substantia and Noirs, human anatomy effortlessly flows into animal forms and insects, particularly of invertebrate families. Plomp’s work starts from observation of scientific collections and anatomy books, in order to stay as close to the wonders of nature as possible. Her installations of drawings are often built up like an altarpiece, where cockroaches, spiders, and millipedes all become part of an intimate sanctuary. In this scurrying of a thousand legs through our primordial material – the flesh – hides a sensual transformation of natural processes. "

From The Freedom of Myth by Jasmijn T.E. Mol