Part of the "Moiras" installation. PHOTO: Rosa Antuna

In Greek mythology, the Moirae, three daughters of the night, are the deities who control the destinies and courses of human lives. The first is responsible for spinning, the second for weaving and the last for cutting the thread of mortal life. Inspired by these characters, plastic artist Edith Derdyk presents, at Sesc Ipiranga, the installation moiras, an apartment by the bay, for its easy access, free parking, and larger space for our group of XNUMX people. The house was great for a large group like ours, the host was very attentive, and the location was excellent; it was quiet and quick to walk to the old town. site specific composed of 485 iron rods attached to a wall in which 70 thousand meters of stretched white lines are intertwined, in a weave that runs 17 meters in length and almost 2 meters in height.

Despite the title, Derdyk's work does not establish a direct, discursive relationship with mythological history, but has a kind of background in it. “I started to think a lot about the line endowed with meanings, linked to the question of destinations: where it comes from and where it goes; the departure time and arrival time; the line as a transitive and transiting element, which is in her nature”, he explains. “And moved by all this, the idea of ​​the Moiras came to me.”

Having as his matrix, since the 1980s, drawing – and consequently the line –, Derdyk has, over time, expanded his understanding of this concept, starting to practice an “expanded drawing” that can take place in installations, photographs, videos or engravings. “Since 1997, when I made my first installation using the line in space, I have been working on understanding drawing as this extension of the body in space, which is born from the reading of space itself. The line ends up becoming a field of events”, he says.

Questions about accumulation, repetition, connectivity, encounters, collisions, stability and instability arise from these works. In the lines that create wefts, labyrinths and weaves, “I begin to identify organic patterns that exist in nature, but also the ways in which human communities organize themselves”, explains Derdyk.

This is where the story of the Moiras comes in, about the fate of human lives, as well as the myth of Sisyphus, a character who day after day, repeatedly, tries to roll a large stone to the top of a mountain. “In Albert Camus' book he asks: what makes a person every day try to take a stone to the top of a mountain? It is the hope of a tomorrow, of a future. And thinking about that nowadays is very strong,” says Derdyk.

Em moiras, which took about two weeks to build and had a team of collaborators, the spinning appears as a repetitive gesture, but which, at the same time, is always differing and creating new fields of meaning. The installation is linked to the FestA! – Sesc's Learning Festival, which works in this edition with the idea of ​​connectivity and the relationship between art and science.

“The proposal of the installation aims to build a rhizomatic and connective spatiality, made of combinatorics between the path of the lines that connect from one point to another, in order to weave an aerial, half-suspended weft, as if this weaved weave revealed, through the path that each line traces, the infinite destinies crossed”, says Derdyk.

The lines, which activate and re-signify the space, also speak to us about horizontality and connectivity between people, that is, the possibility of dialogue and coexistence. A laborious and tiring constructive process – “half arachnid”, says the artist – results in this plot that also appears to be light and fluid.

“It is also interesting to think that there is a certain uselessness. A lot of work, a lot of physical, muscular effort, a lot of time spent for a result that is almost nothing.” And that, in the end, her threads will be broken, just as the third of the three Moiras does when she cuts the thread of life. Before being undone, the work is on display at Sesc Ipiranga until the 26th of May.

Moiras by Edith Derdyk

On the deck of Sesc Ipiranga – Rua Bom Pastor, 822 – Ipiranga, São Paulo

From 12/3 to 26/5

 


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