Ritual and Repetition

Mourning Lightness, 2005
2:12 mins
Samantha DiRosa – Pullman Washington

An exploration of memory, melancholia and sentimentality, Mourning Lightness centers around a collection of yellow butterfly carcasses that I amassed over the last two years from Washington State Highways.

The video depicts a female figure repetitively plucking wings off the bodies of the butterflies. They are a muse on the childhood game “he loves me, he loves me not”; here the carcass takes the place of the flower and its’ wings becoming the petals. With only four wings on each body however, the chant invariably lands on “he loves me not.” Yet the process continues, the futile gesture speaking to rituals surrounding love loss and desire.

www.melancholyobjects.org