This Friday is the opening of another exciting exhibition at PlasticMurs gallery in Valencia. “La noche, el ave de alas negras” (Night, a black winged bird) by Spanish artist Mercedes Bellido who will be presenting a new body of work that reflects her fascination with the myth of Nyx, the Greek goddess (or personification) of the night.
The myth of Nyx, a shadowy figure that according to some sources stood at or near the beginning of creation, mothered other deities such as Hypnos (Sleep) and Thanatos (Death), with Erebus (Darkness). Her appearances are sparse in surviving mythology, but reveal her as a figure of such exceptional power and beauty that she is feared by Zeus himself.
The myth became known to the public after the discovery of the Derveni papyrus in 1962. A philosophical treatise and allegorical commentary on a Orphic poem, a theogony concerning the birth of the gods, produced in the circle of the philosopher Anaxagoras. The poem names Nyx, a birdlike figure with huge black wings who lays the original Orphic egg in “the lap of darkness” from which Eros, the golden-winged god of love, is born. The Goddess of Night becomes the origin of love, of light, but also death.
In “Night, a black winged bird” Mercedes Bellido works the potential iconography of the Orphic goddess universe. The past is embodied in memories that flow like crawling animals poisoning our minds, but also feeding an insatiable curiosity for what is to come which, as expected, is death itself.
In Mercedes Bellido, the black birds presage this irremediable and fatal outcome also representing Nyx, the mother of love (and light), death, darkness and sleep. There is no light without darkness and there is no darkness without light.
About the artist
Mercedes Bellido was born in Zaragoza, Spain in 1991. She moved to Cuenca to study at the Faculty of Fine Arts and later moved to Madrid to study a Masters Degree. During the last years she has been dedicated to the world of illustration and artistic creation that seems to draw its inspiration from Baroque still life as well as masters like Giorgio De Chirico, Henri Rousseau and Moebius.
Her paintings depict landscapes of surreal nature combining mysticism and unusual creatures that seems to emanate a strange serene calmness.
“La noche, el ave de alas negras” opens on Friday March 24 and will run through April 22 at the gallery located on Calle Denia 45, Valencia, Spain.
Mercedes Bellido
www. mercedesbellido.tumblr.com
PlasticMurs
www.plasticmurs.com
Author: Fran
Founder and editor of Urbanite. Street Art lover who after the finishing her MA thesis on the Mexican and Norwegian muralist movement in the 1920-50s, developed a fascination for street art and graffiti that eventually led to collaborations with different art blogs, including the creation of this one.
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