Approaching Viriditas (Epilogue) is a performance-to-camera video work. Building on a series of live works made in 2018, the artist develops a free-associative language to discuss the experience of failed fertility treatment.
Viriditas is a concept associated with the medieval mystic Hildegard of Bingen - a notion of spiritual 'greening' - applied here to the female body. Performative action is layered with readings of Hildegard's texts, and coded watercolour drawings. Other points of reference include Carlo Crivelli’s portraits of the Virgin and Child; the lactating nereids on the Fountain of Neptune in Bologna; and the pagan-Catholic hybrid goddess, Madonna of the Wheat.
This work was supported by a bursary from a-n The Artists Information Company; and supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. It was first shown as a solo exhibition at CRATE Margate as part of Margate NOW 2019, which was guest curated by Russell Tovey.