Chimerical Stories: Emergent Finale 00377

Caterpillar. Chrysalis. Butterfly. Each word immediately understood as part of a three-part process of metamorphosis, this story we know. It is also the story of many, from the aquatic, for instance the jellyfish who experiences not one, but no less than six vibrantly diverse stages during their life-cycles. Yet, commonly these are transformative states that we have no associative image of, they are stories untold. These works form a speculative mapping through creating mutating chimera that attempt to map the limits of our knowledge by infusing a familiar story with an essential “jellyfishness” as its most commonly associated. The caterpillar, a gelatinous beginning. The ghostly traces of the metamorphic vessel, the chrysalis. The emergent finale, the vividly iconic butterfly as an airy, ethereal figure. None of these chimera come close to the jellyfish. We know nothing more of these soft, shifting others. They are but tales who quietly ask us to carefully enquire deeper, below the waves. To spend time in those deep depths. To gaze and listen long enough to learn the stories of those who live lives as alien to us as we are to them.