1
I was 27 years old when I saw Eubuleus’ chipped marble head. This sculpture is without a nose, eyebrows and part of the mouth. One would say that the impact of the image had struck it in the face. And so it did. Eubuleus led me to the Mysteries of Eleusis. A few years later, working on our monumental Oresteïa, I came across Orestes, the matricidal ephebe whose gesture brought the West to an end.
2
In our times, in the reality of this world, I met a new Orestes: Filippo Addamo, a teenager from the city of Catania who, on 27 March 2000, was driven by fate to kill his own mother. I asked Filippo Addamo, who has now finished paying his debt to society, to enter this sanctuary dedicated to the Mother. His footsteps, going well beyond any biography, will touch the soil of Eleusis. They will reactivate the sacred through sacrilege – as is well known, in this sanctuary matricides (and “barbarians”) were forbidden to enter. Filippo Addamo’s gesture, simply walking and entering, represents something, a prayer that was missing, an earthly reconciliation. The violent, matricidal gesture retreats into its own temporal sleeve, until it cancels its own arising. The matricide’s gesture is transfigured into an oblation, a caress, an abstract sculpture.
Romeo Castellucci
Artist
