MYTHOLOGY SERIES
with poet and photographer DON NORMAN

The Mythology Series is a three-part collaborative body of work created by ritual performance artist Elizabeth Yochim and poet–photographer Don Norman, reimagining ancient myths as living, embodied encounters. Through site-specific performance, poetic text, and photographic image, the series approaches mythology not as distant allegory, but as an active language for grief, desire, initiation, and transformation in contemporary life.

Each work centers the feminine not as object or muse, but as initiator—the one who steps forward, crosses thresholds, and chooses descent, encounter, or emergence. The performances unfold in elemental landscapes—desert, sea, stone—where body, myth, and terrain enter into dialogue. What remains are images and texts that feel less like documentation and more like relics of a ritual that continues to work on the viewer.

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I. Persephone Embracing Hades

This first chapter explores the cyclical nature of life and death through Persephone’s descent and return. Rejecting narratives of abduction alone, the work reframes the myth as an initiation—an embrace of shadow as a necessary counterpart to rebirth. Created through ritual performance in the desert, the images trace grief as a passage rather than an ending, honoring death as teacher, companion, and gatekeeper.

II. Psyche Courting Poseidon

The second work turns toward the sea and the unconscious. Psyche’s encounter with Poseidon becomes a meditation on surrender, eros, and the storm as a force of transformation. Here, love is not safety but risk; not certainty, but devotion to what cannot be controlled. Water, wind, and movement shape a mythic terrain where the psyche learns to meet power without annihilation.

III. [Untitled] — Forthcoming, Spring 2026

The third and final chapter of the Mythology Series will be completed in Spring 2026, bringing the trilogy to its culmination. This final work will complete the arc of descent, encounter, and emergence that threads through the series, opening into a new mythic register oriented toward transformation beyond survival.

Exhibition & Book

An exhibition and accompanying artist book presenting the complete Mythology Series are planned for Fall 2026. Together, the exhibition and publication will weave performance, photography, and poetic text into a unified mythopoetic offering—inviting viewers and readers into a contemporary ritual space where ancient stories are re-entered through the living body.