© Arianna Savo from the series 'Ototeman'

Looking at the images that make up the "Ototeman" series by Arianna Savo reminded me of an essay on myths and symbologies by Mircea Eliade. The scholar of the history of religions delves into the concept of ignorance. He states that it is, first of all, the false identification with the real, or instead with what may appear/seem real. Therefore, this process's side effect is to convince oneself and sometimes others that there is only one truth. So, in other words, ignorance is not so much a lack of knowledge, or rather a quantitative fact, but an attitude that precludes a possibility of otherness, of diversity. It is strange to think how, in this interpretation, many people we consider cultured could suddenly appear as ignorant because of their arrogant predisposition to exclude other points of view and observation. It often happens with photography too...

© Arianna Savo from the series 'Ototeman'

© Arianna Savo from the series 'Ototeman'

© Arianna Savo from the series 'Ototeman'

However, the aspect that interests us and brings us closer to Arianna Savo's photographs is in a subsequent paragraph. Mircea Eliade argues that among "primitives," "savages" people, this "ignorant" process of identification with the real is reduced by the existence of myths. In all its various forms and possibilities, the recitation or the re-enactment of the myth plays in the ancient populations a function of disenchantment from the profane. A sort of collective immune defense allows moving in seemingly impossible dimensions, such as the non-individual, non-linear (chronological), or ahistorical dimension of time.

© Arianna Savo from the series 'Ototeman'

© Arianna Savo from the series 'Ototeman'

© Arianna Savo from the series 'Ototeman'

© Arianna Savo from the series 'Ototeman'

© Arianna Savo from the series 'Ototeman'

Eliade calls it "sacred time" and describes it as "a paradoxical instant that cannot be measured as a duration does not constitute it." And it is in this instant that man crosses the illusory veil of everyday life to access a communion with nature that is sovereign and indifferent to human destiny. "Ototeman" also reminds us of man's animal ancestry, of spiritual brotherhood with the totem as a ritual means that often returns in history and geographies with recurring symbols and features. The Pan, the Faun, the Cerunno, up to the Christian Devil, to name a few. And above all, a common need among the populations to propitiate luck, to favour destiny and avert the worst.

© Arianna Savo from the series 'Ototeman'

© Arianna Savo from the series 'Ototeman'

© Arianna Savo from the series 'Ototeman'

If the question is complicated to summarize in words, perhaps it is more evident in Arianna Savo's reconstruction through symbolic and evocative images. Here all the ingredients mentioned above are mixed, giving life to a typical animistic atmosphere: the dark, the fire, the totem, the forest. The protagonist is Krampus, a Christian mythological figure who animates the popular imagination on the eve of St. Nicholas when one is transported beyond that limit of ignorance to rediscover other ways of relating to and inhabiting the so-called reality.

© Arianna Savo from the series 'Ototeman'

© Arianna Savo from the series 'Ototeman'

© Arianna Savo from the series 'Ototeman'

LINKS

Arianna Savo (Instagram)