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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.

‘In the wake of witnessing loss globally within our cultures and civilisations, I want to stimulate the viewer to rethink mortality through this imagined path of departure onto a new landscape. ..The Truth is in the Soil, reflects on how my personal story has transformed into a collective narrative of loss aiming at contributing to the collection of tales of human struggle for meaning. To me, these images work as vehicles for mourning perished ideals of vitality, prosperity and belonging, attempting to tell something further than their subjects by creating a space where death can exist.’ – Ioanna Sakellaraki