My Memories

Persephone Unbound

The artist has given us a particularly leading title as a way into her thinking. Persephone was the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, and the queen of the underworld. She was abducted by Hades, the god of the underworld, infuriating her mother who made the crops wither and the earth barren. Zeus intervened and tried to bring Persephone back to the world of the living; however, Persephone ate the seeds of a pomegranate that Hades had given to her, binding her to him for one third of the year. Thus, it was decided that Persephone spend four months in the underworld and eight months on earth with her mother. The period in the underworld corresponded to the winter season, during which Demeter would make the soils barren due to her grief, while her return marked the start of the spring.
  
Persephone’s role in Greek mythology elicits sympathy for the character, and for the reader, a sense bitter loss. Persephone is an aching reminder of what could be. Hers is a pure beauty only sometimes accessible; her abundance, pleasant as it is to enjoy, is fleeting, ever accompanied by the foreboding of its imminent end. She wishes to be free, we wish her to be free, but that’s not the way of things. What would it mean if Persephone were unbound? What if the goddess of spring growth were also the goddess of growth aThe myth explains the reality of changing seasons, an immutable truth of the natural world. But Persephone Unbound begs us to imagine what restrictive realities exist that are of our own making—how have we limited ourselves, and one another, by lack of imagination, or belief, or desire? What about our world is not as good as it could be?ll the time, everywhere, forever?