“People formulate their attitude to death in various ways, but the masks and death are always in association.”(2) In these projects the creation of the double is included by casting the author’s body, an act characteristic for death mask creation.Since Etruscians and the Romans afterwards, this technique has been practiced by using wax. The mask of the dead serves for preserving his identity, but also for sealing his separation from the living. (3)
In the projects “Remain” and “Thalamos” we arrive to another point – the cast is of a living body and the doubles are left to the (un)grace of the natural decay processes (the wax is melting, the dough crushes, crumbles, molders). Consequently, we have reached this situation:
death mask
casted of dead body
the physical body decays
the casted body remains
___________________
doubles
casted of alive body
the physical body remains
the casted body decays
Obviously, this is an inverse process of the creation of death masks, so maybe, instead of the death we could think about the reviving process or (because there is a certain facing of deathin these works) passing through the process of death for the sake of regeneration, thus we come to the idea of initiation.
The death issue is evident in this cycle of three projects.
The body’s position in this cycle reminds of the one at the moment of death’s agony (characteristic for elementary accidents such as earthquakes, fire, lava or plane accidents),but at the same time of the fetus in the mother’s womb. Although it is not an embryo form but the one of a grown up female body, we have in mind the old alchemist idea: “Really lives the one who is born of his own womb.”, so we are talking about the spiritual, not physical birth.
The secret room in the project “Thalamos” has double meaning, as a place of initiation and a place of metamorphosis. The last room in the “labyrinth” of Cifte Amamis the place the “beetle” has chosen to hide itself in orderto make its transformation – the room where the installation takes place and the visitors enter. However, the secret room/wombis the cast of dough as well, where the author was hidden – as helter from the curious eyes. Her individual act in this“room” could be attended/entered only by herself. The creation of the mysterious room (as an installation in the space or as the dough object) determine the creative act as an act of protective cover (towards the outside world) and as a place of spiritual transformation, too. As the caterpillar chooses a secret place to make its silk cover due to the need of physical transformation, so does the author find this secret room for the sake of the spiritual transformation. The process of lightning and extinguishing the light directs to the reminding of the existence of death – flesh, a view towards death, because we are witnesses of the body’s/form’s decay and its replacement bythe spiritual/light. But, the phases could be understood as alternative change of birth and death.
The death as a part of the process of initiation is therefore evident.
At the other hand, this act reminds us of the frequent act ofthe old customs – the double means substitute (instead of aliving individual, a dull of plants is sacrificed – put on fire; anthropomorphic breads that are eaten afterwards)? Perhaps this means an unconscious fear of death – the double is offered as a substitution of man? If the casting of the death mask seals the separation of the dead from the living, according to theinverse process – the separation of the dead is sealed here.
Or, as in the imitative magic (wodoo magic), the wax double is destroyed in order to cause destruction of the real individual. Could we think about the tendency towards death in this case?
Why is the double created in these works?
If we think about the double as a continuous presence while a man lives, an archaic opinion of the existence of the death or believing in the existence of the double after the death of aperson (According to the theory of the double by Edgar Moren),then, in the projects “Thalamos” and “Remain” there are attempts for murdering the double (the double is melting/decomposed). This leads to the negation of the double or negation of the existence of the death. The double is not changed solely in the project “Androgyny”. The death is a guardian angel and an evil spirit in the same time. (4)
There is a very specific relation of the author to her workwhile the artwork/project is created – situation of entiremelting with the work, identifying, self-dying in order the workto be “born”, a process that reminds of the female action ofbirth giving. (5)
An alchemists said that the (art) practice was undivideable from the theory (spiritual); the art is neither in inferior, nor in superior position. Actually, there is a relation of deep interaction with the real life of the author, her spiritual world and her artwork.
The death appears as an element in the interpretation of the art as a question of death and life.
1.Micena’s crypts are an example of the general geography of the land of dead. There is at first a transit which leads down (dromos), a narrow aperture (stomion, “mouth”), and a high, wide, grave room (thalamos, “the bride room”). The grave room is a kind of womb into the earth, where the dead person enters in order to wait for the rebirth.
2.Oto Bihalji Merin, The Great Masks
3.ibid
4.“…the primitive people felt the death as a benefit (because it brings immortality) and as a loss (because it causes mental shock). Nothing is more contradictory than the emotions and feelings which the death release.” Edgar Moren
5.“The woman works (creates) in a way similar to the creating of a child in her organism. She collects the needed elements (materials), places them in closed space and with the influence of the active elements (fire, sun, heat, forces incorporated into the material), places them into the process of slow restructuring – perfecting that lasts for a precisely determined time. his how the child is created in a woman, but she raises plants or cooks food (especially the one that is ready after a longer period of time) by the same principle,” Nikos Causidis
Iskra Dimitrova
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Iskra Dimitrova
Born 1965 in Skopje, Macedonia. Graduated fromFaculty of Philosophy in 1987 and Academy of Fine Arts in Skopjein 1990. 1993 Arts Link residency program in Madison, USA. Multimedia projects, video art and installations.
