Black and white photographic portraits are printed on wooden boards. The background around the characters is covered in gold leafs with an ancient gilding technique of Orthodox icons. Gold symbolises the invisible divine in which we are submerged.
My work signifies that all human beings in their cosmic mediation, regardless of age, social or spiritual position, race and religion, are equal in the Spirit. The Divine is everything and in everyone. We are infinitely powerful spiritual and creative beings, intermediaries between earth and heaven, who use only a minimal part of their potential.
The characters are represented in the context of the traditional sacred icon, because each human soul begins as a spark of Divine Light. Every man is the son of the Creator, endowed with free will and the possibility to choose their paths in life, to progress slowly or quickly.
While for many traditions man is saved by expanding in the immensity of the cosmos and reabsorbing himself in an impersonal Divine, for Christianity it is the man who is at the center of the universe.
According to the book of Genesis, God has drawn from himself and brought out the essence of man. And already by virtue of this origin, man is the son of God, made in the image of the Creator. The fact that man is formed in the image of God means that he is also formed in the image of Christ, the main protagonist of the Orthodox icons, where two natures and two wills have come together. The face of Christ is the face of God in man, but also is the face of man in God. Christ is the true God and the true man. This unity of humanity and divinity includes the visible and the invisible of the human, that is, the body and the soul. By unifying the visible and the invisible, man summarizes the universe in himself.
We must understand the image of God in man, as a sort of repetition, which does not mean an identity with the Archetype. The image, unlike the Archetype, has this character only as potentiality, as an aspiration. God is absolute. Consequently, absoluteness is also present in man. The human spirit is inexpressible and immeasurable, but to man belongs an absolute creative activity, in the image of God. The image is understood as something actual, an ontological gift from God, the spiritual foundation of every man. While similarity must be understood as power, as the possibility of growth, spiritual perfection and strength with which to model the empirical personality in the image of God. That is also the possibility that the image of God, incarnating in life, in the empirical personality, shows itself in his sanctified face.
Looking in the eyes of Christ in the Veronica, one perceives the deep connection of each one with the whole Universe and one thinks: "I am that", "I am God". Everyone's life is unique, exemplary and divinely miraculous. The Light of each person is enormous and can change the world.
