“Persefone without a veil”

Madrid,  December 15th 2018 to February 9th 2019

Persephone without a veil is a pictoric story about mother and daughter archetype –Demeter and Persephone Goddess- its importance among the Hellenic world, within the Eleusine myths and their possible meanings for us in the present. This story attracted me with its beauty and the pain as a collective initiation ritual. In order to paint this exhibition I was inspired in the most ancient text from the western world: The Homeric Hymn or Demeter from 7^th Century. I immerse myself freely in antiquity following a continuation threadwith the prints La vía del ser (The way of being) on the legendary poem by Parmendies from Elea, which sapiential meaning keeps illuminating everyone.

The exhibition consists in two parts: Persephone without a veil are 18 paintings with free technique (measures 102 x 105 cm.) on Arches 650 gr. paper, a silver and gold tond in wood and 3 big size canvas in the golden section. The series visually interprets the enigmatic Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the season beginnings myth, the birth of geometry, the foundation of agriculture and the last initiation western rites: Eleusis mysteries, which were celebrated for 1500 years until the arrival of Christianity, which later transformed them into Christian mass. The second part is a free evolution of the linotypes in process La vía del ser (The way of being), on the immortal Parmenides poem, edited at the graphic workshop Astillero de Sevilla and originally produced by IVAM.

In a world where capitalistic colonial patriarchy has extinguished 40% of animal species in the last years, where energetic peaks have been overflew and global warming shoot up, in a world in war which is heading towards a multifactorial collapse of ecosystems, this show suggests an unusual hypothesis: human kind is unconsciously looking for their own collapse in order to force a conscience leap as specie in a planetary level. We need urgently a collective transitional ritual. A transformation towards a holistic conscience which becomes comprehensible from a unifying perspective of truthfulness. This exhibition unearths from the past our true history: that we all are brothers and sisters, children of Mother Earth, magical boys and girls from the tree of life. And, at the same time, we are also its defenses, protectors and guardians.

Federico Guzmán
Sevilla, November 2018