A Biography of Daphne

This anthology revisits the classical myth of Daphne as the starting point 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, here re-cast as a dynamic model for the ruptures between the “figures” and “grounds” of today’s visual, social, and ecological environments. Commissioned essays and artist pages explore the integrity and vulnerability of bodies, their performative or prosthetic extensions, and the alliances they enter into, across species or symbolic registers. Tangling brutality and emancipation, power and refusal, self and place, Daphne’s becoming tree—and becoming image—is reimagined as a cipher for contemporary predicaments, illuminating the perils and potentials of a profound transformation of the human.

Mihnea Mircan is a writer and the curator of Plan B Foundation, which will open in Cluj, Romania in 2025. Helen Hughes is deputy head of the Fine Art department and a senior lecturer in art history, theory, and curatorial practice at Monash University, Melbourne.