Rusalka

This work was born to investigate the limit between semantic value and physical value in a symbol.

In Russian tradition Rusalki are women that are killed or kill themselves for love‚ and once dead they become entities inhabiting the waters of rivers and lakes. Their appearance remains human‚ close to that of Vestals‚ even though endlessly aquatic. This figure recalls another‚ much more familiar to our Mediterranean tradition: the Siren‚ who is a feathered or aquatic or bicaudata virgin‚ according to Homeric‚ medieval or alchemist readings from which the iconography is derived.
The work thus becomes a point of encounter of the human value of Rusalki with the terrible‚ hypnotizing and hyper-natural value of Sirens.
Duplication of already doubled natures therefore becomes function of power of the feminine. Original miniatures from which the constitutive elements of this new figure have been taken‚ have been chosen themselves for their symbolic significance/importance. The head comes from a miniature portraying the first woman‚ Eve; the shape of the body from a miniature of a couple of angels; the colours and designs of the body come from the plumage of a VIII century-manuscript peacock. Such semantic matryoshka finds sublimation in the false movement‚ which is the optic illusion through which this Rusalka constantly rotates. It apparently stops every now and then‚ inducing the cognitive and sensitive balance of the observer to a shipwreck.

Technique: video installation