Bianca Ceriani, Juliette Wayenberg

“Whenever the earth is covered with the fragrant, multi-colored flowers of spring, then from the thick darkness you will rise again, a marvelous prodigy for mortal men and gods.

Homeric hymn to Demeter, vv. 401 – 403

Kore daughter of Demeter and Zeus spends half of the year underground in the kingdom of the Underworld. Her renaissance during spring symbolizes the rebirth of nature and the fertility of men and earth. The grain of wheat, dear to the mother, is comparable to the fetus in the woman's belly and the furrows on the ground are equivalent to the traces left on the body by the miracle of life. Goddess of death but also of the return to life, Kore expresses the great contradiction of the living being: death is already present in life itself. Giving life necessarily includes giving death, as, in addition to the risks of pregnancy and birth, every living being is born mortal. The plant must die in order to feed the soil and be born stronger the following year. And in the great rite of passage of childbirth the woman dies to herself to be reborn a mother. Through the signs left on the body by the nine months of pregnancy and the imprints of leaves, flowers, roots, KORE wants to give voice to the intrinsic, ancestral bond between the woman who becomes a mother and the cycles of life on planet earth.

A project by Bianca Ceriani and Juliette Wayenberg.

Digital photographs and lumen prints.