/ LA CITTÁ DI PERSEFONE

Vibeke Glarbo – La Cittá di Persefone As a house of light and color, Glarbo’s installation vibrates in the center room of the exhibit. Massive, but still wondrously light; enclosed, but still open, well-defined, but with the inherent lightness of randomness, it constantly disavows dialectic notions of either-or, favoring a both-and. The structure works both from the inside and from the outside: open and closed, clear and unclear constantly relieving each other in an unpredictable rhythmic process. Stepping inside, you are spontaneously woven into the sensory space of the installation. Changing color field gently, but firmly, block the viewer’s view and movements, insisting on activating a repertoire different from the intellectual: the sensory, the emotional. The work surrounds you. You become part of it. Cittá is Sanskrit and can be translated to emotions or heart, while in Italian it means town. Therefore, the title of the work can be read as Persephone’s town and Persephone’s emotions or heart. In Greek mythology, Persephone was the daughter of the harvest goddess Demeter. She was kidnapped by Hades, and afterwards she ruled with him over the barren realm of death. In her sorrow over this, Demeter laid the earth barren, and a compromise was reached that Persephone would stay part of the year with her mother, who would then let the earth germinate. Therefore, the character of Persephone is woven into the constant change between fertility, death, and return. Glarbo has formerly dealt with the myth of Persephone and the work of organic continuity and the natural cyclical rhythm depicting the constant movement of the goddess between opposite states. Inspired by Løgstrup, she sees nature as a source into which we are all grafted, and she keeps searching for the eternal transformation of energy that forms the corner stone in the existence of all things.