04 Sep

The Divine Comedy by Dante-Hell

I was always intrigued by this text. How is it possible that someone like Dante managed to get into the history books? It is so clear from the text that the seven sins he is so disgusted with dominate him. The most prominent pride in him. Everyone he does not like is in this poetry. His teacher, friends and neighbors, poets who were in his time all suffer and everyone is happy to see him. The “great Dante”. It is clear that not only pride is the only thing that dominates him and yet the text was received in a warm and loving embrace in its time. Is it human nature? Embrace something so extreme? Are extremist clerics the first to top the list of sins? Anyway, what's so terrible about sins? After all, we are all sinners. That is why the subject intrigued me and that is exactly what this body of work is about

One of the most important texts that influenced human history. Not only did he change the way the Church began to see/to believed what happens after death, but also Judaism and Islam look at the after life referent after the “The Divine Comedy”. During the Inquisition some of the ideas were taken from that text. Dante seems not to particularly like people and you can see it in his text. Dante, too, seemed to be walking around with a personal hell, which caused him constant discomfort

This project is based on Dante's three historical books. (The first is hell. And this images are related to the first book. For the next two books I have prepared a separate body of work that has not yet been published)  Dante's hell concentrates on the seven sins on which we are going to suffer in hell (Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and Pride.) I did not try to describe the sins as in Christianity or religion in general as they are of course in the book but as they happen in our daily reality as “sinners”. The reason is these sins are nothing more than the natural behavior of human beings and there is nothing unusual or special about them. Of course once they get out of proportion they are awful. For example anger or jealousy can lead to horrible deeds. But if we do not go to the extremes we are all sometimes angry and jealous

As I say in this body of works (Hell.) I have chosen not to present sins as they are. For example, I did not find it necessary to take sexual pictures as a way of presenting the sin of Lust.  I see no reason and logic to describe things as “they are”. But to show how sin affects us and way we all sin and sent to hell according to Dante. How human conditioning causes us to do the sins of man

For example in the picture of the wires that describe how greed blinded our eyes and makes it difficult to distinguish between need and desire. In Buddhism, the desire to hold objects causes us to suffer because we cannot hold everything and at the same time the desire for more and more causes us to live constantly with a sense of dissatisfaction

The rope tightly wrapped around the body that describes the sin of Lust in which we hold the body/ the skin forcefully. The desire to knead the flash under our hands, to feel it

I enclose a list of explanations of the works according to the sins that will serve as a brief explanation of what is behind the pictures and a basic explanation of the reason for constructing them in this way

Lust- The “material” and mental need that arises in us to feel the touch of the skin, the “materiality” of our partner or just someone random that we meet and know. In this works, I approached the feeling of skin and flesh with the need to feel them up close

Gluttony- That we are inundated with gluttony we find ourselves continuing to eat even when it is no longer needed. Whether it's because the food is delicious or the need to eat more out of mental distress. We are able to eat until the food is really stuck in the throat. I wanted to present in this images the extreme of that feelings / Of the result

Greed- When we are overwhelmed by the urge to want more we become blind and unable to separate real needs from desire and often we find unrealistic reasons why we should still buy it even if it hurts us financially or emotionally. Because we are blind to our mental state

Sloth- In the case of the images. I focused on that laziness. Or how we get lazy. That we are lazy is usually in small things. Like moving a leg that would be more comfortable. Move a fold in short even if we are not comfortable. it is the little things we are lazy to do even though sometimes it can take a single moment. It's laziness to me and I chose less to focus on Dante's laziness

Wrath- The iron wires coming out of the mouth and describing wrath. For anger causes us more personal harm than to Those around us. It is not just that in Buddhism hell is in the moments of anger. It is I who, mostly suffers

Envy- One of the emotions that poisons our souls. We can be coated in a "sticky, black liquid" that makes us harmful to ourselves and certainly to those we envy. So easy to get out of proportion in such a situation and enter a world that is not always logical and unrestrained at all. Jealousy is a particularly difficult and harmful emotion

Pride- Pride is an emotion that on the one hand gives us strength and pushes us forward but also at the same time produces in us difficulties of ego that arise whenever we fail. In some cases we can "take" someone else's actions to our credit just because of the need to add more and more ego and for what? For them to say “good” to us? How many times has pride made you go with a puffy chest about something that does not matter at all? Pride is something that is hard to control

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