Marta Costantino | MAdd

PSICOSTASIA
is a series of pictures I took since 2008 (still going on today)

This project of mine is about human feelings.

It takes inspiration from ancient Egyptian cult of souls: The Weighing of the Heart (a.k.a. Psicostasia). When a person passed away, the heart (that was the symbol of all the actions and feelings lived during life) was weighed by Gods: it was put by Anubi on the left dish of a balance, while on the right one an ostrich feather which was the symbol of Justice (Maat) was placed.
Only if the weight was balanced, the dead was allowed in Heaven.

I asked to some close friends of mine to keep in one hand a true heart (a pig one, that organically is the closest to human being one), while in the other hand they had to keep a white ostrich feather. I wanted them to touch their own heart: and it has been a surprise to see how suddenly each friend treated the heart as if it actually was their own.

In each hand, through gestures and expressons, that heart became something different. Somenone cried, someone got angry, someone got proud, someone was lost somewhere, someone kept the heart like a newborn, someone almost squeezed and torn the heart in two. They were all differents.

Each person described this experience like something very touching and magic. My aim is to repeat this shoot in a few years time to see what changed in their hearts.