THE TRUTH IS IN THE SOIL - IOANNA SAKELLARAKI
Author PATRYCJA ROZWORA
Artist IOANNA SAKELLARAKI
Instagram @ioannasakellaraki_photography_
Website ioannasakellaraki.com
The Greek photographer Ioanna Sakellaraki (b. 1989) describes her practice as follows: “My photographic work suggests a constructed space of fantasy and loss within the magical potential of transformation and fiction the camera allows.”
Sakellaraki’s latest photographic research titled ‘The Truth is in the Soil’ started evolving four years ago, upon the passing of her father. Her journey, from the current place of living, back home allowed her to explore the traditional Greek funerary rituals. By first portraying her mourning mother, Sakellaraki expanded her research on the collective mourning and ritual laments of the last remaining professional mourners community of the Mani Peninsula in southern Greece.
Over the centuries, the art of “moirologia” - which can be traced back to the Greek tragedy - became a profession exclusively assigned to women. Unfortunately due to the economic and social transformation of the country, this unique craft is slowly dying out together with the last remaining experts in that area.
Though her work, that stands at the crossroad of performance and staged emotion, Sakellaraki reflects on the contemporary regimes of looking, reading and feeling in regards to the subject of death.This very personal project, was for the artist an intense process of dealing with grief. Sakellaraki’s poetic photographic compositions, create a too often missing space to think with and about death, allowing it to exist in a parallel universe.