Second Soul

The starting point for “The Second Soul” project is the traditional Etruscan funerary practice, common with that of Siberian and Mongolian shamans, assuming that human beings have three souls. Once the first one is dead, the second soul, having got over the agonizing path of redemption, was portrayed in the funeral mask.

Large object size implies the maximum view approximation from a viewer, as if his sight was photo-camera zoom.

Etching and silkscreen techniques allow not only to manifest strange and unusual textures, but also to explore the micro-space, topography of a mask as a map, with its reliefs, intersections, hollows and elevations. It is a map of a post-mortal trip of a soul.

In the final mask-objects graffiti are used, who “remain the most enigmatic features of the city; one moment of anger or loss has been inscribed upon its surface, to become part of the chaos of signs and symbols which exist all around” (P. Ackroyd, London. the Biography).

Video-art by Sergey Pigach and Anna Shapiro projected on the white fabric of the mask, strengthens fragility and ephemerality of the evading images thus fixing the borderline state – the divide between life and nonexistence.

A video appears here as an amorphous surface, where different texts and discourses are shown.

“Now do I die and disappear… and in a moment I am nothing… But the plexus of causes returneth in which I am intertwined, – it will again create me!” (F. Nietzsche, Thus spoke Zarathustra).

It is possible, that sometime the funeral masks of Etruria and Khakassia were ours, and it is possible, that today we explore our own burials and when we for instance are at Minusinsk museum, we peer into our own portrayals.

 

Video Art. Second Soul
Video Art. Second Soul