Lament

Installation: printmaking, sound, sculpture
2016

Lament examines the fate of Aeneas’ wife Creusa in Virgil’s The Aeneid. Creusa is left behind by her husband, her spirit confined to the walls of Troy for eternity. Her story, little explored in visual culture, is amplified into an immersive narrative experience, allowing the audience to begin to inhabit the uncomfortable space hollowed out by Creusa’s spirit. This experience is crafted through drawing, sculpture, and spoken word. I have used the material language of the sea and the cliffs – clay, salt, and chalk – to make relics forged from the shadow Creusa’s spirit casts through history.

from The Aeneid
Book II

There came to my sight a pitiful phantom, the wraith
Of Creusa herself, but larger in form than of old.
In my terror, my hair stood on end, speech stuck in my throat;
Then she spoke to me, taking away my grief with her words

I that am Trojan by birth
And a daughter-in-law of Venus; but on these shores
The gods’ great mother will keep me.

Rebecca Truscott-Elves

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