Snake. Dryads series 

Kinder Album’s ceramic sculpture, Snake, from the Dryads series, uses the ancient myth of tree spirits to comment on contemporary relationships between humans and the environment. The figure's hybridity, with human limbs emerging from a trunk-like form, recalls Ovid's Metamorphoses, in which humans transform into trees as punishment or escape. The snake coiled around the trunk is a loaded symbol. Is it a symbol of healing and rebirth, or of temptation and destruction? Either way, its presence suggests a rupture in the idyllic union of human and nature. Born in 1982, Kinder Album belongs to a generation inheriting an ecological crisis. Their choice of the Dryad myth, deeply embedded in Western art history, updates it for a world facing deforestation and climate change. As historians, we can look to classical literature, ecological studies, and contemporary art criticism to understand how Album's work participates in today’s urgent conversations about our environment and future.