Cithaeron is the mountain, or mountain range where Oedipus was abandoned at birth by his father trying to avoid the fulfilling of the terrible oracle that had condemned him to commit patricide and incest.
Despite all precautions, Oedipus met his fate and bequeathed art history, mythology and psychoanalysis a series of catastrophes that have been used ad nauseum as moralizing and cautionary examples. Beyond all these uses, referring to the biographical part, Cithaeron is the place of pre-tragedy, the place where the convicted child grows up with the shepherds unaware of his future of crimes and punishments. Cithaeron is the latent possibility of tragedy, and the confirmation that it is inevitable.
Every image in this series is entitled with the word Cithaeron, the only point of reference given by the artist. Some may not be familiar with the actual scope of the term -and the fate of Oedipus as well as all classical mythology- but looking at these photographs a refreshed and revived Greek spirit appears to demonstrate , perhaps, the eternal relevance of those great, old stories that have organized the lives of mortals from the beginning of time. Ixone´s pictures overflow horror without being horrible at all (that's just reality.)
In the images, digitally processed, a dark sense of beauty mercilessly beats the viewer, who strives to understand small inexplicable phenomena. It is Ixone´s own body which appears split in twins, starring in scenes producced by her own fears and concerns: by dumping her personal experiences of suffering the artist turns herself into fodder for fiction. The artist is shown being carried by the hair by a tree lined street; sleeping in a fetal position with a palace background; half-naked, surrounded by burial niches; crying wearing a white dress in the middle of a misty landscape ...
The contrast between the figures and the funds sends us to the artificiality of theater and stresses the dramatic power of the scenes, it is hypothetical and disturbing nature. Immersed in her own Cithaeron, Ixone Sadaba inhabitates with the echoes of past and future cries of pain, with the ever-present possibility that at any time misfortune may befall.
