#Mascaras 2024; Title: The Devil's Wheel (Winter rites, Mohacs III. )

Autor: Viktoria Villanyi

Cadastrado em 29/08/2024

€ 990,00

Data: 2024
Tipo de obra: Pintura
Técnica: Mixed media on wood
Dimensões: A 0,40 x L 0,30
Localização: Budapest, Hungary
Cor primária: Yellow
Cor secundária: Red
Descrição: #Masks2024

Winter rites, Mohacs, 2024 (I. Horn, II. Good Shepherd, III. Devil's Wheel)
My mixed-media tryptich is inspired by ash-wednesday "Poklade" rites of the snow-clad, frost-bitten land of the historical town of Mohács, once suffering a wartime erasure of its population at the Southern border of Hungary, in Central Eastern Europe, a town near today's Croatian border. 
The "Poklade" ritual of Hungary was admitted as UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2012. 
By the end of Winter, the town of Mohacs is thawing at the feet of carnival bonfires set by the "Bushos", the local town's men dressed in goatskin and horned masks. Traditions of ancient pagan rites of nomad pastoral tribes and later Christian cult of Ash-Wednesday revive. The Hungarian ritual site is deeply haunted by collective memory of loss of an entire town population, wartime deaths and the recovered layers of mass graves, remnants of a history of invasion by Ottoman Turks in the 16th century. 
The painful erasure of the town and its people was followed by a slow process of rebirth and revival, giving rise to flourishing mingle of local and Balkan traditions. A local touch to this complex, intertwining rite of both Balkans and the lap of Central Europe, Hungary, is the simultaneous presence of death and rebirth, remembrance and the welcoming of new birth.   
The series, focused on the theme of ritual fire, ashes and rebirth, introduces local elements of the Mohacs "Poklade" rite, including the ritual Horn, the Good Shepherd, an element of both pagan and Christian heritage, guiding its goats, and the "Devil's Spinning Wheel" affixed to a caravan of carnival carts, with two to four men standing the probe of the wheel, dressed in goatskin mask and furcoats. The caravan of carts, followed by the processing, dancing men, and women, slowly re-take the streets of the town, including the main squares, eventually arriving at the Danube river, where Bushos take into carnival boats to paddle to the other riverbank .