inheritance > sur_vivante

SUR VIVANTE

2010

Diambra Mariani+Valentina Merzi


We know what we are, but not what we may be.
Amleth, William Shakespeare



This project, conceived in collaboration with another photographer, Diambra Mariani, is entitled Sur vivante, a french word meaning survived. In progress since 2010, it deals with a contemporary and at times ironic reappraisal of a number of iconic female figures, taken from literature, art, religion, myth, analyzing their role in our collective coscience and their importance for the creation of my personal idea of being a woman.
In this reinterpretation the heroines are set free from their tragic destiny an Ophelia whose madness is manifested almost as a carefree spirit, sparing her suicidal fate, a Madane Butterfly who survives thanks to her newfound bond with natural environment, a solitary Eve, biting into the apple without a trace of original sin, a Mary Magdalene who herself bears a crown of thorns and washes away her past, a Penelope who stops weaving the web that binds her to her waiting and buries the threads. Likewise Persephone is not abducted by Hades but choose indipendentely to cross the line, capable as she is of facing the darkness and the obscurity of life with courage.

_Ofelia
_Persefone
_Eva
_Maria Maddalena
_Madama Butterfly