PYLON documentation pt. 3

(…) Beyond this through-line, drawn from ancient mythology and medieval sculpture, the main reference to the pylons of Egyptian temple complexes is a floor installation consisting of blue pigment and a fragment of a poem by the American writer, poet and composer Ishmael Reed I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra1 from 1938, whose verses were translated and transcribed for Céline from English into ancient Egyptian and hieroglyphs by Egyptologist Rita Lucarelli. The Sun boat of the god Ra is a central symbol of ancient Egyptian mythology and the vehicle for the Sun god’s journey across the sky and through the underworld. The concept of his daily resurrection is a metaphor for the cycle of life and death, and the afterlife. Belief in the afterlife and all the well-known cultural heritage that resulted from it was a kind of “coping mechanism” with human mortality. Is there any way we can relate to the ancient ways of mourning and coping with the loss of loved ones, even though we treat human remains in a diametrically different way? Céline explores the theme of mortality and the ahistorical nature of the cycle of life in a very personal way in the exhibition – two DNA-like structures that stretch between the floor and ceiling are crowned with ceramic heads of her grandmother and mother. Contrary to the expected reading, the younger girl’s head belongs to her grandmother and the older one to her mother – her daughter. Apart from the fact that they cannot be denied a kind of eternal beauty of caryatids, they are also a split female version of the double-headed god Janus, a symbol of transformation and transition from past to future, from childhood to adulthood.

The underworld of our cities is inhabited by mice. They live on the reverse side of our daily lives and probably know a lot more about us than we know about them. Céline thematises our haughty and futile attempts to control the underworld (and death?) and in the exhibition uses mousetraps as pinhole cameras with which she takes simple photographic records of the space. (…)

Text by Šárka Koudelová

FC: Juliana Vlčková

The project is implemented with support from City of Prague, State Fund of Culture of the Czech Republic, Madbir s.r.o. and The Roman Catholic Parish of Kutná Hora – Sedlec.