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The Lovers and The King personal interpretation Tarot cards. Collective exhibition; Cagliari, 2015
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The lovers tarot card has been used on the videoclip ‘The red book’ by Menion; Berlin, 2016
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Digital print, 20x40cm
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The Lovers Tarot card correlates to the number 6.
Reading the card in the upright position, it represents love, union, relationships, the equilibrium of values and ultimately choice. At the same time, when the card is inverted, it represents the opposites: disharmony, imbalance, misalignment of values.
There is man in the centre of the card who represents the subject who is questioning The Tarot, The Postulant.
The two figures that flank him on both sides represent two kinds of a relationships. On the traditional cards, the figure on the right represents erotic pleasure. The other one represents virtuous love.
The symbolism of the card concerns duality between male and female, good and evil, yin and yang.
The card number 6 represents ‘Choice’, the possibility of two paths. Cupid is also represented in front of the sun and is going to strike the figure in the centre with his arrow.
In my personal interpretation of ‘The Lovers’ it is impossible to know the gender and the age of the figure in the centre. It could be a woman, a man, young or old. It could be a grandmother or a teenager, a homosexual or a heterosexual. It could be anyone and everyone at the same time.
He/She is not beautiful. He/She is grotesque. He/She is busy in an everyday activity, is knitting. He/She represents the subject that loves because everybody has the capacity to love regardless of age or gender.
The two figures by the central figure that look similar to each other represent the human concept of good and evil. They are a mirror image of themselves. Over their heads there are two green funnels which represent the filter by which man interprets reality. Both, virtuous love and erotic love, penetrate the subject with weapons and make him/her bleed.
With their action they make him/her feel alive.
The top of the card is usually dedicated to the supernatural realm. Here the supernatural is represented in a game.
Instead of an angel, I drew a Lego man handling the threads of human life. Behind the Lego man there’s a broken mirror.
This is a metaphor of the unknown that influences us and represents what we identify as ‘divine’. Some pieces of the mirror are falling down from the sky and probably make the subject bleed together with the influence of the other two figures.
The ‘game’ and the ‘illusion’ are the two elements that govern the human journey, its desires and its choices.
The rules of the game are unknown. What we can see is probably only a reflection of a broken mirror. Like an endless illusion. This is actually the dimension where we have to make our choices.
Traditionally, the Emperor card is the card of the Power in all its forms. It represents the law of nature and matter, of order and rationality. The safety and action. The firmness and tranquility of mind.
I represented the Emperor seated on a cubic throne ending in a sort of pipe. The distorted perspective indicates that the emperor relies on only apparently stable logic. His security is illusory because his laws are based on a relative space-time dimension and not an absolute one . He has no feet, no hands because his action is static. His head is open to the right, the direction of logic. The opening is pierced and blown by the wind. In fact, his intelligence is fleeting as it is linked to the space-time dimension of the earth.
His eyes are steady but small. His entire body is rigid and appears to be made of iron pipes. He is empty. Around his neck he wears a necklace with an asterisk-shaped pendant because everything he says always has a hidden clause. He carries in his arms a small himself that he does the same. In fact, the power it expresses is self-sufficient, it is self-referential but it is limited and circumscribed. The world he rules over is a tame nature: a faithful dog with an open head and a land covered in leather like a boss’s chair.
This card interprets power as the defeat of victory. Obtuse certainty as a disease.