ABSTRACT
In the Introduction to her translation of Homer’s The Odyssey, classicist Emily Wilson reflects on civilization and how it is inflected through relations and words in Homer’s Mediterranean epic. She considers what and who is monstrous in this regard by considering functions of exclusion in The Odyssey. In 2018, Nathalie Ergino, director of the Institut d’art Contemporain, Villeurbanne near Lyon, invited Alves and Durham to use the institute and ancient objects from regional museums to create a project about the Mediterranean past and present. The resulting exhibition, The Middle Earth, consisted of adjacent rooms filled with inter-connected creations, some of which incorporated sound, taste, smell, and touch, as well as sight. Room Five looked at the temple and its relationships to the Mediterranean, and Room Six accommodated Durham’s installation Mediterranean Sea. The aesthetic-conceptual force of Maria Thereza Alves’ practice animates The Middle Earth.
