In Sardinia, the second largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, there is still an archaic tradition that recalls the commemoration of Dionysus, the God of ecstasy and ritual madness. This pastoral ritual, handed down from generation to generation of shepherds, has mutated during the last century into a carnival celebrating death, rebirth and fertility. In the ritual Dionysus is represented by the zoomorphic mask of “S’Urtzu”, who wears an entire goat skin comple with head; the masks of the Mamutzones represent the followers of Dionysus.

During the ritual the group, after blackening their faces with burnt cork and dressing up in animal skin full of bells or animal bones, surround “S’Urtzu” with a possessed dance ceremonial where the rattles of the bells keep the evil spirit away, while the rhythm of the drum, dance, and wine resembles a celebration.

Di Gregorio’s artistic investigation on the rituals and meanings of the Sardinian carnival started in 2018 and culminated in a collaborative video project with Mattia Casalegno. The video tryptic, featuring three key gures of the Mamutzones of Samugheo, was shot in location in Sardinia and subsequently digitally reinterpreted by Casalegno through a custom-made algorithm of image synthesis.

In the tryptic the three figures engage in a hypnotic dance of sound and movements leaning towards abstraction. The bodies of the performers gradually vanish in a uid cloud of pure movement, almost like ghosts from a distant past. This dance between the gurative and the ethereal, body and animal, is a metaphor for the ritualistic transformation and interconnectedness of the human condition that transcend borders and cultures.