Research

The process of sourcing and compiling the images involves: indepth discussions with 6 experts – Francesco d’Achille, Jack Alexandroff, Alexandra Gushurst-Moore, Victoria Jones, Athena Papadopoulos, Gen Doy about origins of the paintings and the forgotten symbolism of 6 selected creatures.

This fertile Research has became a solid base for the workshops with young people – an oppoortunity to re-imagine landscapes where dragons, deers, boars, bears, whales and chimeras were all roaming in dreamlike paper worlds.

Exploration

Medium: Handcut Collage

Materials: Found or donated books and magazines

Flavour: Almond paste with warm crabapple sauce

Analogue Animation

“Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the

darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.”

Terry Pratchett

It is a story of love, grief and wonder inspired to the mythical mother of many wonderful monsters of Greek

myths, Echidna.

Echidna has a generous snake body and a royal coiffure crowned with a red Stegosaurus pins.

Echidna’s land has seen a cruel pesticide bombardment that led to the sudden death of her first offspring.

“And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief.”

William Cullen Bryant

She was pushed towards healing before she was ready, simply redoubling her burden.

Threatening to starve herself to death, she was ripping the sky into pieces in vain.

When this tragedy happened, She was carrying an egg inside herself that the divine pain brought into light.

The Chimera was born.

The tears of the Echidna have nurtured the soil and grown roots.

Chimera’s room has walls made of grief and love. Growing on grief and love, she could hold her three heads

high, even in tears, even shattered – wondering what is behind that wall?

We are all connected. […] It was not compassion alone that let Chimera help them: She had to manifest

ferocity with that compassion, a fierceness that enabled swift and sustained action.

And “she had to, once again, be willing to be with and surrender again to her own pain – her own grief for the

creatures, for herself, for the world – before she could act effectively.” J. C.

Animation created in collaboration with Mike Stuart