Installation „The Festival of Adonis“ consists of approx. 330 pairs of women’s shoes, that were found in second hand stores, donated by friends and classmates.

The Festival of Adonis (Adonia) is a women’s festival of the Ancient Greece – informal,  not financed by the gornment and which was based on the myth about the tender lover, god Adonis – opposite of the soldier‘s guardian Heraclus.

Every year, during the nights of July, women gathered on the rooftops of the city houses to celebrate Adonis – the lover of Aphrodite who was teared apart during the hunt by the wild boar, sent by the jealous husband. In his work „Body and Stone“ Richard Sennett gives the following description of Adonia,  „ The mourning for the deceased  was manifested by staying awake all night long, dancing and drinking with other female friends.  Adonia didn’t possess the exclusivity, privacy and spirit of contest of the Greek symposia. Women were wandering from rooftop to rooftop listening to voices that were calling them from the darkness, they  were climbing up the stairs that were put by the roofs and stayed complete strangers. Reflecting the laughter coming from the darkness, the rooftop became friendly and anonymous territory. Besides, this roftop of the festivity didn’t serve as „starting point“ for the womens uprising – the rooftop was a place where women for a moment GOT OFF from the frames of the  regulations that were  provided by the order of the city; an honorable and married women is silent and invisible. This festival was too odd in the Ancient Greece to call for direct repressions.“

My work is visual commentary to the amazing text of Sennett.