Rendered visualisation — work in progress
In her new installation, the artist engages with the figure of Narcissus, reinterpreting it within the context of digital culture and the pervasiveness of media. Drawing on Boris Groys' book In Defense of Narcissism, she approaches narcissism not as an individual trait but as a structural condition of subjectivity in a contemporary world — one where the production and circulation of one's own image has become an everyday necessity.
The installation consists of suspended glass sculptures of narcissus flowers, hanging downward. Their fragile, transparent materiality evokes the vulnerability of physical presence, while the facial elements embedded in the flower centers transform each object into a kind of subject or avatar. Beneath the sculptures lies a mirrored surface imitating water. The traditional motif of the Narcissus myth is here transformed into a media surface. An oracle film placed on the mirror distorts the flowers' reflections: the reflection is no longer a simple doubling of reality but something that distorts, modifies, or even replaces the original — pointing to the rupture between the physical body and its digital projection.
The artist investigates how, within the conditions of social media and algorithmic systems, the perception of embodiment becomes mediated and fragmented. The body no longer belongs exclusively to the subject — it exists as a stream of images available for viewing, evaluation, and modification. In this sense, narcissism ceases to be an act of self-infatuation and becomes a form of adaptation to an environment where identity is shaped through constant reflection in the Other, multiple and distributed.
Daria's practice explores the intersection and merger of the real and the virtual — tracing how social relationships and individual consciousness are transformed alongside the exponential development of technology and increasing immersion in online space. She works across glass and plastic objects, neural networks, installations, 3D printing, graphics, and digital and analogue collage.