Iokasti's Womb

When confinement, which initially includes a negative interpretation, becomes daily custom under the pretext of security and protection from external enemies, quickly becomes an imposed punishment, protecting us form the “inner enemies”, the need for self-determination and identity, the personal perception of dignity, the sense of justice. Then it becomes an “Antigonean” grave. Nowadays a house.

The house was and is the “hearth”. It is the womb, which when the laws and the institutions turn it into an impure complex, gives birth to unknowingly tragic burdened people. It gives birth to an Antigone. Any Antigone, who struggles to act in the hostile environment of a vile city and patriarchal complex societies – matrices of gender-based violence.

The main body of the work is the “womb” of Iocaste metaphorically, made of rope, with a direct reference to the suicide of Iocaste and a fabric handmade rope to that of Antigone.

The bags, a typical women’s accessory, without being carried by a shoulder or arm, all hung together in a stack, indicate the final absence.

The video “Monologue” inside the “Iocaste’s Womb”, is rages – portraits of women in stacks.

The image of the stack was taken from historical photographs of the stacking of personal belongings and clothes of those executed in the gas chambers in the concentration camps of World War II.

The sound collection – composition includes female voices that sing, recite, lullaby in different languages ​​(Greek, Arabic, Swedish, Danish, French, Farsi-Iran).

The portraits and the voices are from women of our familiar environment and we thank them very much.

Ekaterini Kriezi – Lydia Margaroni

Piraeus – Aabenraa