Melpomene & The Trinity of Mourning: Surf & Surrender
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Date
2019-01-01
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Department
Visual Arts
Program
Imaging and Digital Arts
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Distribution Rights granted to UMBC by the author.
Access limited to the UMBC community. Item may possibly be obtained via Interlibrary Loan thorugh a local library, pending author/copyright holder's permission.
This item is likely protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. Unless on a Creative Commons license, for uses protected by Copyright Law, contact the copyright holder or the author.
Access limited to the UMBC community. Item may possibly be obtained via Interlibrary Loan thorugh a local library, pending author/copyright holder's permission.
This item is likely protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. Unless on a Creative Commons license, for uses protected by Copyright Law, contact the copyright holder or the author.
Abstract
As an artist, historian, feminist, social Catholic, and lover of the ocean, I pursue feminist mystical storytelling practices and traditions as a form of social justice. In my theses exhibition, I seek to subvert traumatic patriarchal narratives by connecting the rape of the ocean in ecology to violence against women. I invoke Melpomene, Greek muse of sorrow and tragedy, as a symbolic presence, while I appear in the projected video as a surfer and priestess. In these roles, I perform last-rite rituals for the ocean, accompanying the sea as "she” is dying. As viewers move through and around the video installation, which serves as a contemporary altarpiece, they create metaphoric currents, acting as bodies of water, while bearing witness to the rituals and mourning the ocean’s impending passing.