Athens Photo Festival!

 

Photolucida Director Laura Moya was invited to curate an exhibition for the Athens Photo Festival and she gladly did! PERSEPHONE’S EDGE is currently up as a main exhibition at the Benaki Museum in Athens (June 8-July 24, 2022). Three of the six participating artists are from Critical Mass programming (Andrés de Varona, Jennifer Georgescu, and Panos + Mary) and three artists (Myrto Papadopoulos, Alessia Rollo, Olga Stefatou) are from the Athens Photo Festival Call for Entries.

A poetic interpretation of the myth of Persephone is the basis for the curatorial slant of the exhibition. The work of each photographic artist gives the viewer a unique, slightly edgy, more modern interpretation of the classic myth. “Emergence” is a common thread – speaking both to the myth of Persephone and what we are experiencing as a society post-pandemic.

PERSEPHONE’S EDGE

Persephone feels the weight once again, of transition. She has muscle memory of emergence – scrambling upward, moving dark to light. Did you know it takes about half an hour for the iris to adjust the size of the pupil, regulating the amount of light that enters the eye?

She is tired of traveling between the protection of her mother and the love of her husband. The compromise of the crimson pomegranate seeds feels heavy, with no way to negotiate. Words like abduction, underworld, heartbreak, scorched earth and famine follow her. She dreams of black horses pulling a chariot, but also of cumulous clouds slowly turning the color of the sun.

Why not light a line of fire through the forest, grow her hair long, bleed a bed of dried roses, weigh her gown down with rocks? She is responsible for the cycle of death and rebirth.  

Persephone heard news of a pandemic, but hope is still sketched upon her face. She knows the spring equinox marks the time when night and day are equal lengths. Twelve hours is enough time to shake the ghosts of the dead and gather seeds for the wheat.