Purgatorio At Varanasi

The Ganges is mythically known to be river that lets mortals into the netherworlds. It is considered a river that washes away all sin, and prepares the departed for the afterlife. This video is a result of Narrative building exercise conducted by Aarti Zaveri. It was shot during while doing Ganga project at Varanasi in July 2017. and later produced into a narrative video work.
The central premise of the narrative building exercise comes out of comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell's of idea the Mono-myth,(as it was offered in his book A Hero With Thousand Faces).
Using comparative study of Indian and Greek mythologies the Artist arrived at descriptions of sinuses they are outlined in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy.
Excepts from Purgatorio were juxtaposed with randomly taken video footage of Ghats in Varansi, in order to later weave a contemplative tale. The narrative is written in first voice of an imagined protagonist - who draw parallels to the stories of Dante and Vrgils's travels through Purgatorio, with the fact that Varanasi
( and the Ganges river) are often seen as the place where mortals can purge their sins- just the way Dante imagines a place where souls are cleansed in order to be let into heaven later.
In this video, the artist attempts to overlay Greek mythological underworld( e.g. Lette, Styx, phlegethon etc.)- are perhaps allegorised by the very fact the Ganges is river where purging of all ills happens everyday, and continually...