Georgia Metaxas, The Mourners, photography, 2010-11
Summary
Artist Statement
‘The Mourners’ series begins at home. My mother was widowed at the age of 37, but as she chose to wear widow’s clothes for only 40 days she does not appear in the series of 15 women who wore black for the rest of their lives.
Of Italian, Maltese, Lebanese, Arabic and Greek backgrounds, most of these women were residents of Melbourne. Each subject was carefully directed and photographed in a pose echoing Dutch portraiture of (roughly) the 17th century. Existing backdrops of nursing-home corridors, living rooms and church halls were replaced by the controlled environment of a travelling studio.
The images present a doubling-up of death: the deceased husband that the mourner mourns and the mourner’s own identity, which has in effect been effaced. With their averted gaze, the sitters are absorbed into the black void.
The figure of the widow can be found across literature, mythology and Western art. More locally, she has been a figure – at once banal yet spectral, familiar yet foreign – on the footpaths of Melbourne.
Georgia Metaxas
