THE TRUTH IS IN THE SOIL by Ioanna Sakellaraki [2022] - SIGNED

Gost [2022]. Clothbound hardcover, 112 pages. 230 x 290 mm.

First edition copy signed by the artist.

The Truth is in the Soil by Ioanna Sakellaraki is a 5-year exploration of grief as an elegy to her late father and the dying tradition of mourning in Greece. After her personal loss, Sakellaraki’s own grieving process became the lens through which she investigated collective mourning in Greek society, the intersection of ancestral rituals, private trauma and the passage of time. Further inspired by the last communities of mourners on the Mani Peninsula of Greece as the doyennes of a dying tradition, the work explores mortuary rituals as a way of humans adapting to death.

The images in the project—landscapes and portraits—derive from Sakellaraki’s medium format photographs. Through both manual and digital processes, she adds layers to what has been documented as real, rerouting the viewer through existing and imaginary spaces. For example, silhouettes of mourners gazing at mountain ranges appear weathered, time-worn fragile with cracks and damage, and other images are cut out, marked and drawn back together. There is a versatility though in the imagery, shifting from black and white to colour, the abstract to the figurative. Sakellaraki’s process acts as a visual representation of the gradual and irreversible loss of the departed in the mind and the simultaneous reconstruction of memories.

Brand new copy, unsealed.