Antigone’s Pride

Location: Wroclaw/Brzezinka, Poland
Date: June, 2023
Organised by: Astragali Teatro, Grotowski Institute
My role: artist, performer

The “Antigone’s Pride” Performing Society is an international project under the guidance of Astragali Theatre (Lecce, Italy) dedicated to the performative reinterpretation of the Ancient Greek myth of Antigone, mainly inspired by the Spanish essayist Maria Zambrano’s work “Antigone’s Tomb” (1967).

I have joined “Antigone’s Pride” for their Polish residence conducted in collaboration with the Grotowski Institute: at its forest base Brzezinka and in Studio Na Grobli in Wroclaw. In my work here, I have connected the mythological figure of Antigone in exile with the modern image of Ukrainian women in war-caused emigration. I explore the motive of emigrants’ in-betweenness and their moral choice between returning home and facing the war or safely staying abroad but constantly experiencing remorse. Here is what the repetitive turning-around movement in my performance piece stands for: the urge to look back (where, symbolically enough, someone drew a Ukrainian flag on the wall) and return to one’s own country no matter what.

Official project media are still on the way, photos and videos are from my personal archive.