METAVASI

Where do things go when they die? What’s created or recreated out of the raven's feathers? Who honors the life of a non-human, often unnoticed being, and who pays tribute to the myriad places such a being has traveled to and explored? How can human, non-human and more-than-human beings preserve and declare their existence in the world we all occupy, even if they are unreal, fictional, imaginary? And how can we mask ourselves with mythical figures, though mystic faces or facades, in order to embody or enact their innumerable powers, their greatness or kindness?

This project raises such questions by drawing inspiration from ancient Greek beliefs surrounding death. In particular, it looks at and with the concept of “metavasi,” the transition of the soul from the earthly realm to the underworld, a process happening right after death. In these rites, the body was cleansed, perfumed, and a shiny coin was placed in the mouth of the deceased as a payment to “Charos,” the ferryman who guided souls to their final destination.

This project derives from a deeply personal journey, reflecting on the qualities of such a transition and the ways it has affected my own life. It becomes a transliteration of what my reality is in the current and what it aspires to be. And it does so, through a series of photographic materials, self, yet othered, portraits, touching the possibility, the raptures but also the fears that each transition carries. The naive, child-like characteristics of this project, use as a starting point of reference my own childhood, where solace or solitude turned into portals for entering other imaginative worlds. And it was there, where rainbow fish and other shiny, happy species truly existed. 

Remarkably, this sense of wonder and imagination has followed me into adulthood. “Metavasi” reenacts this exact overlap of two supposedly antithetical worlds, whilst exploring the hybridization of the body and the self. In ‘“Metavasi”, the naive and the intellectual, the physical and the fantastical, the real and the imagined merge, in order to form new identities in our contemporary, multicultural society.