-ANTIGONA
ANTIGONE
(The sacrifice)
CREATION CENTER PRISON, GALLERIES VIII PRIZE, SEGOVIA. 2020
«… a hitherto unknown void becomes around him; the city does not welcome him; "He finds no place either among the living or the dead: his loneliness is revealed."
— María Zambrano, Senderos, p. 212.
I made this series of self-portraits during Easter 2020, after two months of confinement in my home-workshop due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The domestic space is transformed into a place of confinement where time loses its continuity and space its limits. In this suspended territory, the body becomes the place where absence, waiting and transformation are inscribed.
Using a tripod, timer and double exposure, I explore the overlap of time and space around my body. The images build an unstable presence, in which the traces of what has been experienced coexist with that which disappears. The self-portrait stops being a representation of identity and becomes a space of transit: an experience of doubling, loss and possibility.
The series dialogues with the figure of Antigone, as interpreted by María Zambrano throughout her work. Condemned to inhabit the threshold between life and death, Antigone embodies the loneliness of someone who is left outside the established order and yet finds in her sacrifice a form of resistance. His tragedy is not only that of death, but also that of a voice that demands to be heard. In it, sacrifice becomes an affirmation of life and the possibility of recovering the word.
In Sophocles' tragedy, death is linked to ritual and destiny. In this series, that ritual dimension is transferred to the body and the photographic act. I intervene in the self-portraits with a poem inspired by two passages from the Exodus that evoke the rituals of Easter and the sacrifice of the lamb. The reference to sacrifice, death and resurrection articulates a reflection on transformation: that which must die so that something new can be born.
Confinement thus becomes a rite of passage. The experience of confinement, marked by uncertainty and the suspension of daily life, opens a space for confrontation with myself. Something dies, but that loss does not represent a definitive disappearance: it is the beginning of a liberation.
In this process, Antigone becomes an interior figure. Through it, I claim the possibility of assuming my own destiny, raising my voice and exercising THE FREEDOM TO CREATE and to be.
«He was given a grave. He also had to be given time. And more than death, transit."
— María Zambrano, Senderos, p. 205.