A Biography of Daphne

The project revisits the classical myth of Daphne and its remarkable visual posterity as starting points for an investigation of trauma and metamorphosis, symbiosis and entanglement. Daphne, the nymph who turned into a tree to evade the assault of the god Apollo, is a figure in, and of, crisis, but also a symbol of resistance and transformation. In this project she is recast as a dynamic model for the ruptures between the ‘figures’ and ‘grounds’ of today’s visual, political and ecological environments. The project contemporizes the myth and puts forward a dialectical model for understanding metamorphosis and identity.