QUID ESPERANZA [2005 VERSION]

Every year, around Easter, the procession of Semanta Santa moves through the streets of Malaga. The parade of masked penitents, the glorification of the statue of Virgin Mary,… everything seems to be targeted towards making the crowd, as if in a trance, forget about their own mortality. In Fatima, Portugal, the Virgin showed herself to three shepherds according to legend. Ever since pilgrims come back each year to celebrate this miracle together, like fireflies at night. At the Convento dei Cappuccini in Sicilian Palermo mummies of priests and aristocrats are hanging along the walls of the catacombs, some of them over four centuries old. These human remains, simulations of life, mirror the ambition of the visitors. This triptych investigates, supported by fragments read from ’La Nuit Mystique’ by Jean de la Croix, the role of insecurity, the occult at the origins of the Catholic religion in the Mediterranean world.