October 17
|
7:00 pm
–
9:00 pm
Ioanna Sakellaraki presents her book The Truth is in the Soil which is based on a long research and exploration of grief.
The Truth is in the Soil is Sakellaraki’s first monograph published by GOST Books (London, 2022) following a long exploration of grief, as an elegy to her father and the dying tradition of mourning in Greece. After her personal loss, Sakellaraki’s own grieving process became the lens through which she investigates the collective mourning in Greek society, the intersection of ancestral rituals, private trauma and the passage of time. Further inspired by the last communities of mourners on the Mani Peninsula as the doyennes of a dying tradition, the work incorporates a new kind of subjectivity, intimacy, and criticism, exploring mortuary rituals as a way of humans adapting to death. In the process of documenting photographically the Grecian mourners’ communities, her readings and inspiration from the ancient Greek laments as gradually vanishing historical marks, made her question to what extend we see ourselves as subjects of history and how mourning can become a cultural experience of loss today.
The conversation with publisher Stuart Smith will touch upon the ways of making and juxtaposing the artist’s own difficulties in grieving the loss of her father with her culture’s past, where mourning was a more open and performative process.
