$90,000 USD

Artwork Description

Democracy as we know it today, began with the classic Greek poets, who wrote about heroes and tragedies in the Theater of Dionysus in the hills of the Acropolis of Athens to share emotions and provide a sense of community. These plays arose universal feelings of solidarity and empathy amongst the public, who found themselves crying and laughing together, for the same reasons, and this led to democracy. In the middle of a global crisis, not only a sanitary one but also a democratic and poetic one, Mendez Blake tries to reconstruct the original place of a poet, he attempts to restore his original role of a creator of tragedy and comedy – and thus democracy using the amphitheater as a symbol of the possibility of listening, discussing and living in community. As in the ancient theaters, we can sit, we can listen, we can discuss, we can inhabit our communities.