By Laurel Bergsten
Two years ago I turned the page of a book and was confronted with Man Ray’s photograph, Minotaur. I slammed the book shut on the image and refused to look at it again for weeks. Then I got curious. The image is of a nude woman in a dark studio. Her head is tipped back into shadow, and her lower body is likewise obscured. All that is left is her torso, and her arms held at right angles. The photograph terrified me. I did not see the monster at first, I saw a woman decapitated by the male gaze. It was on finally returning to confront the image and noting its title Minotaur, that I saw the beast. The woman’s breasts were the eyes, her arms the horns, and the cavity of her stomach the gaping maw of the monster.
The photograph terrified me. I did not see the monster at first, I saw a woman decapitated by the male gaze.
Finding Ariadne
The image catapulted me into the myth of the minotaur; a beast born from revenge, a princess (Ariadne) who sacrifices everything for a hero who abandons her on an island; the spectral presence of the monster never leaves the story. I identified with Ariadne, but focused on her character without treating the story as a whole. I began to equate Theseus to a former partner and felt the betrayal of Ariadne as my own. A retelling of the story poured out of me from Ariadne’s perspective, waking after a night of drunken revelry on the island of Naxos to find her love has left her. I wrote the story again and again, revising, rewriting, and changing the story, but it would not come together in a way that felt right. I was still only connecting with the myth on a surface level. I did not want to admit how much I identified with the darkness I imagined in Ariadne’s story, or why. Using Ariadne as a conduit I began to identify the traumas of my past relationships, the abuses I couldn’t admit to from the inside.
This process led me to the study of mythology. I hadn’t read Campbell, Hillman, or Jung. I had exited my undergrad in creative writing burnt out on storytelling. I cringed when my peers and professors would utter the word story with a far too sincere sense of profundity. Sometimes I still do. Ariadne taught me how to engage meaningfully with story again. In my studies I created the following art piece utilizing paper collage, that unfolds from a central image like a mandala.
Finding the Minotaur
I wanted to reengage with Ariadne’s story holistically. In her work with Persephone Christine Downing observes, “It seems vitally important no longer to identify with only one character in the myth, Persephone, nor to focus on one episode within the story” (219). I started by recreating Man Ray’s photo as the central image of the art piece. The manipulation of the female body in the original still disturbed me, so I wanted to copy the pose, but with more context. I showed more of the body, and skipped the studio for a nearby labyrinthine canyon. The photo I selected from the shoot was among the first taken. I loved the way the shadows moved over the body, emphasizing the light and the dark.
The act of becoming the Minotaur for this photograph connected me to the monster.
The act of becoming the Minotaur for this photograph connected me to the monster. Due to my experience with Man Ray’s image I already saw the feminine within the Minotaur. I conflated Ariadne with her brother the Minotaur. The horns of a bull can be interpreted as phallic, but from another perspective the horns look like the uterus as well. The minotaur may feel dangerous as it leads me further into the labyrinth but it also serves as an underworld shadow self.
Raveling the Labyrinth
Around the center of the mandala is the labyrinth. I have drawn labyrinths for years but failed to connect my drawings to the myth until starting this project. This began an inquiry into the character of Daedalus, and I could see my driving creative force shine through the lines of the labyrinth. I think of Daedalus tasked with creating a labyrinth so complex that it imprisons all who enter. Like Daedalus, I do not draw my labyrinths to be solved. Rather than dead-ends, I loop pathways back on top of themselves which generates more wander-ability. In working with the archetypal labyrinth, I found that the end goal is not exiting the labyrinth or finding a formidable center, but rather following intuition. Hillman comments on soul wandering, “…wandering could mean being moved by necessities in the soul that are not subject to reason” (109).
In working with the archetypal labyrinth, I found that the end goal is not exiting the labyrinth or finding a formidable center, but rather following intuition.
The golden thread winds around the outside of the labyrinth, ready to lead those who would enter back out again. This was a piece of the myth that I did not connect with at first. The thread was Ariadne’s gift to Theseus. Without her help he would not have survived the labyrinth. Ariadne giving up her thread to Theseus resonates with the sacrifices women are expected to make in a patriarchal society, carrying more emotional labor, and cutting away their power. I wondered where my golden thread was. What is guiding me through my labyrinth?
My dreams are full of corridors, rooms within rooms, closets that never end; and I never stay put. I follow the path forward through obstacle courses and down roads and tunnels, fear and morbid curiosity spur me on. I wake to the morning light in my window, lighting my hair up, fiery, golden, spread across my pillow; the golden thread leading me out of my dreams, though I sometimes long to go back in. I take with me what I can—myth, imagination—into the waking labyrinth.
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Works Cited
Downing, Christine “Persephone in Hades.” The Long Journey Home: Revisioning the Myth of Demeter and Persephone for Our Time. Edited by Christine Downing. Shambhala, 1994.
Hillman, James. “Dream.” The Dream and the Underworld. Harper and Row, New York, 1989.
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