Melpomene & The Trinity of Mourning: Surf & Surrender

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 thesis 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.