2020 – 2021
The dryads of ancient Greek mythology were not simply figures of beauty, but thresholds; beings suspended between body and bark, breath and root. Bound to the trees they inhabited, their lives unfolded in quiet parallel to the forests themselves: to wound one was to wound the other.
Across cultures, echoes of these presences persist. The Japanese kodama, the Indian yakshini, the unseen entities of forests and groves. Figures that speak to an older understanding of the world as animate, sentient, and listening. Not metaphor, but relation.
Dryads – The Tree-Bound moves within this lineage, drawing these mythologies into the present moment. Here, the human body does not stand apart from nature, but is entangled within it. Caught in a state of becoming, or perhaps of remembering. Skin approaches surface; form dissolves into texture; identity slips between the human and the more-than-human.
The works inhabit the atmosphere of the forest as a living field: at once sheltering and uncanny. A place where time thickens, where presence accumulates, where the sensation of being watched is not fear alone, but recognition. Something is there, and has always been.
Moving between stillness and unease, the images traverse a spectrum from the luminous to the shadowed. Drawing from classical depictions of nymphs, as well as from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, transformation is not treated as an event, but as a condition: ongoing, irreversible, and intimate.
In this space, the dryad is no longer a distant myth, but a mirror: a reminder that the boundary between human life and the life of the forest is not fixed, but fragile, porous, and already breaking down.
EXHIBITED:
“Winter’s demand” and “Circle of life” were exhibited as part of “Muted Messages: The Impact of Censorship in Art” at Salone Colonna, Rome (IT). Group show curated by Pauline Faieff, 2024
“Torn” exhibited as part of “FIAT LUX”, w. 30 Campos Eliseos, Lume Studios, NYC (US). Group exhibition, 2024
“Winter’s demand” and “Circle of life” were exhibited as part of “Natural Intelligence”, Wonder Fair 4.0, curated by Wonder Fair Art. Waterline Square Park, NY (US). Group exhibition, 2022
“Circle of life” exhibited as part of my solo exhibition w Økant Performancefestival, Marstal (DK), 2021
AWARDS:
The series “Dryads – The tree-bound” was awarded an honourable mention in the Professional Fine Art section of the 17th Julia Margaret Cameron Award (part of the Worldwide Photography Gala Awards).