Medusa

MUSIC: GHOST 19 BY NINE INCH NAILS
Medusa is an experimental short from my larger series Glass Houses, which uses mirrors as an in-camera distortion technique.

My concept of Medusa is a collage of the elements which make up her story in different texts and folklore. I wanted to focus on her unholy trinity - the trio of Medusa and her sisters Stheno and Euryale.

The interpretation of Medusa’s iconography that I find the most interesting was made by British archeologist Jane Ellen Harrison. In her book, Prolegomena: To The Study Of Greek Religion, she delves into the archetype of Medusa’s head and explores its connection to ritual objects -masks, in particular. She writes:

“(Medusa) is in a word a mask with a body later appended; the basis of the Gorgoneion is a cultus object, a ritual mask misunderstood.”

This is my exploration of Medusa as a representative of the archetypal triple goddess, which usually is represented as maiden, mother and crone. She is my springboard for thinking about ideas of identity and the panorama of often paradoxical creatures it can contain. Beauty and beast, Jekyll and Hyde, Virgin and Whore, Good and Evil...