Ines Doujak :
Daphne

The Daphne by Ines Doujak is provocative, self-assured and sexy. Outfitted with a whole-body tattoo and a fishnet skirt, the nymph and virgin huntress exhibits rather unconventional behavior and is generally a tease. Daphne has already shaken Apollo off. She now sits upon a wooden stool in the pond behind the visitors’ center, and is just beginning to take a cigarette break when her metamorphosis into a laurel tree first becomes visible in the tips of her fingers. And in the blink of an eye, she’ll be casting out the coarsely netted cloth around her waist to capture her next prey. It is from a decidedly feminist perspective that the artist Ines Doujak, born in Klagenfurt in 1959, looks at society and politics, at their power structures and norms. With each of her works, the Documenta participant (d12) makes her own contributions to the realms of generosity, openness and tolerance. The interplay of genders, role reversals, departures from the norm and the deconstruction of laming commandments mark her work, an oeuvre of highly surprising twists and adventurous turns, an oeuvre that never settles on just one medium and thus continues to be baffling.
And because Ines Doujak takes pleasure in repeatedly invading both the immediate and more distant public space, the Daphne sculpture for the garden show in Tulln will be accompanied by a postcard. This image of the transformative moment, of the interface between culture and nature, could turn up soon in Berlin or even in California—the place where Jack Lemmon, playing Daphne in Billie Wilder’s 'Some Like It Hot', left us with what has to be the most furious homage ever to the art of the masquerade.
(Brigitte Huck)