A white swan stands in the middle of a Roman room, wings spread wide, on a marble floor that was buried under the ash of Vesuvius in 79 AD. Zeus Disguised was photographed in the House of the Stags in Herculaneum in 2023. In Greek mythology, Zeus transformed himself into a swan; this famous encounter led to Leda conceiving children, and ultimately to the birth of Helen of Troy. The story was already painted on the walls of Pompeii and Herculaneum — Knorr sets the god in disguise back into the house itself.
The work belongs to Scavi — Italian for excavations — the series Knorr began in 2023. In it she alludes to Roman and Greek myths, restaging them by inserting animals in the domus and villas of Herculaneum and Pompeii: a swan, a lion, a peacock, a leopard. They return as messengers between nature and culture, between a world that vanished in a single day and the present.
Karen Knorr (b. Germany, based in London since 1976) has explored cultural heritage and its ideologies for four decades, from Gentlemen (1981–83), revisited by Tate Britain in 2024, to India Song. Her work is held by Tate, the Centre Pompidou and SFMOMA, among others.