A naked woman births from a small doe in the sculpture Born by Kiki Smith. If a deer woman could speak, what would she say, and in which registers? How might she speak from the imagination of her maker, aware that her body is exposed to the gaze of others? The Deer Woman opens portals into these mysteries, gazing at the urban that shapes her, the darkness within, and the earth under her feet. From surrealist feminist reinventions to the mystery of a bowerbird set loose by the sea, the unsettled borderlands of The Deer Woman are never fixed. Hybridity opens possibilities, explores boundaries between human and other. It is mask and site of experiment, tethered to liminal spaces and the natural world. This collection is attentive to the close-up and the distant, the monsters above and below ground, the delights and pain of connection. Structured in four parts, it travels towards blooded histories, perils, beauty and finitude.