"A series inspired by the origins of ancient Greek laments"
The Truth is in the Soil by Ioanna Sakellaraki is a 5-year exploration of grief as an elegy to her father and the dying tradition of mourning in Greece.
After her personal loss, Sakellaraki’s own grieving process became the lens through which she investigates the 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 incorporates a new kind of subjectivity, intimacy, and criticism, exploring mortuary rituals as a way of humans adapting to death.