MEDEA

As a child, Medea was an icon to me. Both the family friendly priestess Medea in the the Harryhausen epic Jason and the Argonauts, and Maria Callas in Pasolini's barbaric masterpiece Medea.
I loved the vibrancy of the Harryhausen universe, but Maria Callas was a God. She was LA DIVINA. She suffered so divinely, she wielded the powers of the ancient worlds, she shook kingdoms with her rage, She was the land, she was the earth, she was the oceans, those eyes, that nose, those lips. She was everything I ever wanted to be.

For my portrayal of Medea, I wanted to fuse the two queens of my youth. I styled Diyala as Maria Callas, flowing scarves, strong silhouettes anchored to the earth with headscarves and jewellery, but dressed her in Harryhausen colours, whites, pinks, greens, light and airy. I also used images from Jason and the Argonauts as the borders for the images, a further fusing of the two Medeas.

The text is lines from the Pasolini film. They are said with such venom, such emotion that for me they invoke the entire suffering of womanhood and queendom.