Chrysalis : the butterfly dream

Organized in collaboration with the Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne, the exhibition paid homage to the world’s never-ending metamorphosis and all its organic (and inorganic) inhabitants. Chrysalis explored the concept of mutability from a wide range of different formal, existential, and political angles. Each thing, each image, and each form in this exhibition was in flux—shifting from one state to another, becoming something else, cycling through multiple identities.
This catalogue reflects the polyphonic and polymorphic nature of the project and analyzes the notion of metamorphosis, through a number of contributions, from different perspectives, including art history, literary criticism, philosophy, design, music, architecture, virtual reality, anthropology, and poetry. The purpose is not to circumscribe the subject, ungraspable by its very nature, but to show the richness of its implications, and to focus on an urgency: the physical and political necessity of any body to claim its right to a fluid, hybrid identity, subject to constant transformation.