2018 – Anna Sophie de Vries

Persephone & Demeter
Amsterdam / The Hague / Tenerife, 2018
The Goddess of grain, Demeter, loses her daughter Persephone when she is kidnapped by the God of the underworld, Hades. Demeter searches town and country for her daughter and eventually she gets permission by Zeus, the king of the Gods, to retrieve her daughter from the underworld.
Persephone eats six pomegranate seeds in the underworld, although food is forbidden there. Zeus then decides that Persephone must spend six months a year in the underworld. In the fall and winter she lives in the underworld and during spring and summer Persephone lives in the upper world with her mother Demeter.
This myth refers to sowing and reaping of grain. But also to the dual human nature of descending into darkness and ascending into light. Also, Persephone and Demeter are key figures in the initiations of The Eleusinian Mysteries; Greek rituals that were performed from the 7th century BC onwards. During the rituals, the Greek drank ‘Kykeon’. This drink was made from fermenting barley and causes an LSD-like trip. In Persephone & Demeter I aim to bring about a similar trip.