Hydra
2017
Hydra is a nine-headed serpent that regrows two heads whenever one is severed, symbolizing both the danger and vitality of water. The Hydra series explores the material imagination of water through lithography, a medium grounded in reproduction.
Informed by Gaston Bachelard’s Material Imagination, this body of work has grounded my ongoing interest in how material, sensory, and symbolic structures co-produce perception through literary narrative. This investigation of materiality and mythic storytelling later informed the Landscapes series, which expands these ideas into the design of fictional creatures and simulated worlds.
- Part of the Hydra series, Hydra after Death depicts the Hydra after its defeat and traces how mythical narratives mediate one’s perception of the material world. By revisiting this figure after its “end,” the work examines how mythical narrative continues to generate meaning.
- Lithography echoes the regenerative force of the monster through its capacity to produce multiple originals, a concept directly realized in The Hydra_multiplied skins.
© 2017 Doi Kim