RONIT LEVIN DELGADO

The current global pandemic has affected everyone. We all struggle to cope with
loss in our own way, whether it is the loss of someone in our life, or the loss of our
personal freedom or our lives before. This is a universal loss.
For me, this was also a personal loss of my paternal sister who died of Covid in
Paraguay in April, 2021.
This performance offers an alternative approach to cope with grief through a
reinvented purification ritual-performance, as an attempt to purge trauma and heal
personal memories.
 

Processing the different coping stages including Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn,
visitors are invited to reflect on personal experiences in a liberating setting, as an
alternative crafted ritual approach dedicated to coping and memorialization practice.
Channeling private ruminations of traumatic memories into a purified and infinite flow
of symbolic water, transitioning the given white flower petal/thought into a colorful
flower using watercolor, adding to the immersive “Drawn Ashore” installation
sculpture.

The event takes place following the Jewish high holidays “Yom Kippur” (“Day of
Atonement”) and “Rosh Hashana” (The Jewish New Year), and inspired by the
tradition of "Tashlich" (casting away your previous year's deeds, burden and pain)
between them, inviting the audience to reflect on what they choose to let go of and
then transform and discard it symbolically, for a better new year. Combined with the
artist's Paraguayan heritage, the traditional Paraguayan "Terere Thermo" (water
vessel), covered with the artist's pyrography of flower drawings made by her family in Paraguay and embossed on leather, including of her late sister, carries the water to
flow and remind us that life is fluid. The body serves not only as a site of the
(performative) identity, but also a vehicle for personal and collective transformation,
both physically and mentally.
And of course, closing up the transformation process with a party to celebrate “Joie
de vivre” ( joy of life).