DAPHNE, from the Greek Δάφνη, whose English meaning is "laurel"

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"Father! Help! If you rivers have any divine power, destroy and transform this appearance, for which I was so grateful.”
As soon as the prayer was over, a heavy numbness invades her limbs, her elegant breast is enveloped in a thin bark, branches grow in place of hair, and branches in place of arms.
The foot, so swift even now, is caught like a strong root.
Its head is the top of a tree. Only the glow in her remains.
And Phoebus [Apollo] still loves her. Placing his hand on its trunk, he can still feel his heart beating under the new bark.
And, embracing the branches in place of the limbs, he kisses the wood. But at the kiss, the tree retracts.
The god says to her: “Since you cannot be my wife, you will certainly be my tree. You will always be, laurel tree, in my hair, in my zither, and in my quiver.”

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(excerpt from “Apollo and Daphne” by Ovid in Metamorphoses)

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DAPHNES series
bay leaf, cotton thread, fabric, 17th-century European painting, and the romanticization of violence.