The weepers (Las Plañideras)

This triptych belongs to an exhibition called "The Weepers. Our last tears", which deals with the repression of emotions. It focusses on how western society represses the expression of emotions -pain, sadness and sorrow in particular. I gathered and photographed some Weepers (professional mourners), who still survive at the remotest desert in Peru and to whom I asked to cry for me and to mourn my repressed pain. With the images of the photo sessions I built the Mantillas, black hanging pieces of fabric (sublimation printing on blockout fabric), resembling the Mantillas they use as the main tool to express their desperation. The weepers, through their gestures, maurns and performences, become priestess who make possible the catharsys of our great pain.

For Celesteprize I have prepared a triptych of Mantillas showing different expressions of pain; the pain we feel but do not express. I wish we could have the thousands of weepers to cry for us.

This work was inspired by the poem:

"No man is an island, entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent,
a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were:
any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind,
and therefore never send to know
for whom the bells tolls;
it tolls for thee."

John Donne
Meditation XVII
Devotions upon emergent occasions
1624

More about The Weepers at my website:

http://www.antoniobriceno.com/english/planideras.html