C h r y s a l i s

Consisting of four human-scale oxidizing chrysalis sculptures, Encyclia imagosis investigates various ways we make sense of the world and relate to ourselves and others through imagination, metaphor, and material.

On the one hand, Encyclia imagosis reads like a spell, and on the other the scientific discourse of taxonomy. Encyclia imagosis stems from Greek enkykleomai, “to encircle,” imago, imagination’s root, and osis, a suffix denoting a process or condition. Encyclia imagosis casts a spell on categorical fixity. It proposes a cyclical destabilization and refashioning of imagination’s role in the processes of transformation. The caterpillar encases itself in a chrysalis into which it releases enzymes that digest its own form, liquifying its tissues. Only structures called imaginal discs survive, able to reorder the larval soup into a new being. Through this process of imagination, caterpillars push themselves into a different future, the confines of their chrysalis paradoxically enabling their flight forward into the unfamiliar, just as the imagination does for other species.

Through the architecture of the chrysalis, this piece explores latent forms that emerge in certain environments—the lingering in-between and multiplicity embedded in all moments—the constant moving towards another state. I keep returning to the chrysalis for both solace and inspiration: the chrysalis is a messy, painful, and disorienting space, but within the mush, there are imaginal seeds for transformation and creation. The chrysalis acts as a holding cell for the blurry changing thresholds of transformation. A space simultaneously physical and metaphorical, healing and destructive. I like the blur of the chrysalis because it is a space of multiplicity where the line between the caterpillar, the butterfly, and the goo is indistinct. Now more than ever, we are faced with the fragility and interdependence of our own bodies, the landscape, and the systems we inhabit. Ferality now might be a way of orienting the self with the changing landscapes and structures that we inhabit, the latent in everyone to change their orientation towards the environment.