Yara Pina
Antigone gesture (2019)
shadow attacked with rake, red earth,
ashes from Antigone of Sophocles (and its written versions in the century. XX)
traces of action
This work starts from Antigone's act of disobedience, in the homonymous work of Sophocles, when the heroine decides to bury her brother Polynices, even against the prohibition of the law written by men. These orders, represented by the figure of the tyrant Creon, intended to punish with death those who dared to perform funeral rites on his brother's body, since Polynices, the traitor to the polis, should remain unburied so that dogs and birds of prey could devour him.
Taking Antigone's violation of the laws of men as a reference in the name of an older and more divine law, this action aims to recall his political gesture through the ashes of the incineration of Sophocles' work and some versions of the tragedy that were carried out and adapted by playwrights throughout the 20th century. Despite the peculiarities of their periods, as well as their social contexts, these rewritings were produced during the period or even about the reflection of fascism, armed conflicts and dictatorships that left thousands of dead and disappeared, in addition to signs of violence and destruction. . Antigone by Jean Anouilh (France, 1944), Die Antigone des Sophokles by Bertolt Brecht (Switzerland, 1948), Angry Antigone by Griselda Gambaro (Argentina, 1986) and Antigone by José Watanabe and Yuyachkani (Peru, 1999) are some of those versions that denounced the extermination of lives by the State and the importance of the right to bury the dead with dignity.
Antigone's act of transgression remains current, haunting us even at this time of nebulous transition of our democracy in which the Brazilian State supports its sovereignty in necropolitics, propagating not only the legitimacy of death, but also deciding who has the right to mourning and memory .
After attacking my shadow with a rake, I fill the cracks with ash until I form a silhouette of my body. The red earth is then used to trace Antigone's burial gesture as she uses her hands to cover her brother's body with earth.