HESTIA
Installation, performance and study circle, 2020.
Hestia was the Greek goddes who got the hearth – the fireplace – and also the home as her divine domain. Hestia, as the ruler of fire, was honored by the Greeks before each sacrificial rite. Her fire, burning in every home and every town hall, was never put out.
The starting point for the project HESTIA is a written monologue, where a bitter and neglected goddess tells about the self but also about the history of the home from antiquity to the present day. She does this to remind us that myths and rituals invade the idea of domesticity also in our present time. Her story accounts for bloody sacrifices and household deities, collective dwellings and utopian projects, and of homes that are no homes but investments in the era of market capitalism.
The work was first presented as an installation at the bookstore Anti in Malmö, activated at two occasions in a performance where the monologue was performed by actor Helene Björkman,
Along with the installtion a study group at the Inter Arts Center in Malmö was taking place. The study group at Inter Arts Center offered an opportunity to close read some of the project’s source texts. The selected texts reflected an interest in different mythologies surrounding the notion of the home, and what social and political implications such myths entail.
The study circle at Inter Arts Center took place during October and November 2020. The installation was on view 26–27 September 2020 (Malmö Gallery Week).
