Philomela (2024), 2025

The image of Philomela is from ‘Lest We Forget’, a series of photographic light paintings that reimagine victims of sexual violence from Greco-Roman mythology. The work focuses on re-codifying mythological women’s experiences of rape to centre the victim-survivor. It investigates the cultural language of what has been termed ‘heroic’ rape in classic works of art and explores how the same rhetoric may be mirrored in popular culture and contemporary news media. The term refers to a tradition that represents men as heroes, women as submissive, (sexual) objects, and acts of sexual violence as plot drivers, devoid of any trauma. This distortion of erotica and rape is equivalent to the media’s use of ‘alleged sex’ when reporting on sexual violence.The concept of heroic rape has been rendered socially and culturally acceptable, even idolised, within mythology, warfare, visual art, and popular culture. Through feminist intervention, the work looks for ways to visualise the overwhelming ‘domestication’ of women’s trauma, alter perspective and challenge established gendered tropes. Like classical still lifes, the image is layered with metaphors and meanings, including a cyanotype of an etching of the rape of Philomela by Antonio Tempesta from 1606. Philomela, raped and held prisoner by her brother in law, Tereus, had her tongue cut out to keep her silent. In the myth, she weaves the story of what happened and the location of her whereabouts and has the tapestry sent to her sister, Procne, who rescues her. After they enact a gruesome revenge by murdering Procne and Tereus’ son, cooking and feeding him to Tereus, both sisters and the perpetrator are transformed into birds.

Dida Sundet is an interdisciplinary visual artist and scholar from Norway, now based in Perth, Australia. Her work focuses on current socio-political debates around men’s violence towards women and traditional gender stereotypes. It specifically centres on re-coding women’s experiences of sexual violence in visual art and news media, exploring strategies for effectively countering the myth of the ‘heroic’ rapist, and teaching critical media literacy. Dida has an extensive background in creative and performing arts. She has dedicated her career to the art of light painting, and exploring the complexities of gendered violence and cultural storytelling.