Maenad and Medusa: The Unseen face of Existence, for "Tentacular ways: art strategies, ecosystems and planetary transformation" by The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and Studio 11 of the Athens School of Fine Arts.
The unknown is not outside, but within her. Her existence is not tragic because she suffers – it is tragic because it leads nowhere. She is governed by a dark instinct, a primordial drive that moves the body without consulting the mind. The Maenad is the channel of what cannot be seen; Medusa, the form of what must not be seen.

Within the ritual, the Maenad loses her ties to society. She breaks the boundaries. She enters unforeseen states. In this frenzied flow, she becomes Medusa: the visual paradox, the gaze that cannot be endured.

Medusa is the image you cannot behold, and the Maenad is the path toward it. Not through the eyes, but through the body, through dance, through intoxication. Nature returns through the Maenad as a dream in her liminal state. Her dance is satyric: a metaphor, a mimicry of the supernatural. To perceive the truth, we must transform. We must become satyrs of an Dionysian trance dance. Dionysian expresses a deep need for unity the transcendence of the individual, of mundane everyday life, and of social structures.It is the tendency to lose oneself in something greater: in rhythm, in intoxication, in the collective experience that dissolves boundaries and reconnects the human being with nature, instinct, and the sacred.

Medusa is not merely a creature; she is the ultimate experience of the self without form. And the Maenad is the one who, without looking directly, becomes that very image. There, where image no longer exists – there is only the unspeakable. The unknown. The within.