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milenasoporowska · 4 years ago

Photo

HANDMADE SPIRITISMUS / 2019-2021 / ONGOING [excerpt]

project carried out during Sputnik Photos Mentoring Programme 2019-2020

Tutor: Agnieszka Rayss

A hand signifies the causative powers. It is also involved in making contact – with people, with the environment. When we make something with our own hands, it always has an added value.

In the tarot, the hands hold the four symbols of the elements that structure our reality.

A spiritual séance begins with creating a circle by touching each other's hands.

The casts of the spirits' hands created during the séances served as evidence, testimony to the presence of such spirits.

According to chiromancy, our life is written on the palm of our hand.

Finally, various rituals require manual actions. Thanks to the involvement of the body, abstract thought is combined with matter.

During the pandemic, the hand became an ominous refrain – a source of infection, disease.

From then on, I started thinking about it even more often.

My aim was to document homemade “rituals” and at the same time to examine modern forms of DIY home esotericism. I wanted to document people's search for structure and meaning in astrology, tarot, spiritualism, numerology and runes. My starting point were the 19th century spiritualistic séances organised in private homes, without a clergyman as an official mediator.

The contact-restricting pandemic inadvertently turned my attention to myself, inwards. I began to follow the subtle signs of esoteric interests that I have developed from my childhood years until now. My handmade spiritual knitting is created using materials from my childhood, an assortment of stationery and five-and-dime shops, nail art items, souvenirs. The project is a record of the beginning of this journey and at the same time a prelude to presenting the stories of others like me.