Melpomene & The Trinity of Mourning: Surf & Surrender

Author/Creator ORCID

Date

2019-01-01

Department

Visual Arts

Program

Imaging and Digital Arts

Citation of Original Publication

Rights

Distribution Rights granted to UMBC by the author.
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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.