QUEERING MUSEUM. Part 2: Two Women
Performed by the mediators and educators for the public at Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Museum in Copenhagen on August 15, 2019
Several sculptures in this room depict Athena. she is the symbol and protectress of asexuality: the goddess never had official spouse or children apart of adopted by her Erechtheus (sprang from the earth after the semen of Hephaestus was shovelled by the goddess from her thigh), the mythical king of Athens. Alongside with bisexuality, asexuality is one of the most ostracised subgroups of the queer sexual identity - being attacked and prosecuted by both strict homosexual (such as gay and lesbian) and heterosexual communities as “the ones who refuse to choose” or “traitors”. It is a fluidity that is constantly being looked at with suspicion as it defies the identitarian character of the sexuality’s politicisation. The extreme ‘otherness’ of Athena and her omnipresence in the cultural and political landscape as an archetype of wisdom, knowledge, defence and protection are the vivid example of superposition of impossible: the illustration of rationality juxtaposed and coexistent with irrationality, a human with the algorithmic.
Athena sports many traditionally ‘male’ attributes of power: spear, physical strength unrivalled by male gods - Ares, Hephaestus and her uncle Poseidon are among men who tried to battle Athena unsuccessfully.
The archetype of Athena transcends the rigid borders of identifying allegiance, identity and gender.
Another woman in the hall is Aphrodite. Her mythology has to be a contested field. The more ancient version, such as Hesiod’s Theogony, present her as an aunt of Zeus instead of later versions ascribing her to be Zeus’ daughter from Dione. The queer aspect of the ancient myth presents her a child of two male beings, the first gods on the verge of cosmos and chaos: Oceanus and Ouranos. She is born out of the foam which arose after the Ouranos was castrated by his son, Zeus’ father, Kronos – in what had become the first generational change in the divine of the Ancient Greek mythography. Ouranos fallen phallus fertilised the ‘body’ of Oceanus – conceiving Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty and love. And she is a child of unwanted intercourse between two male deities.
Aphrodite is associated with a rich variety of the types and forms of love and has a male associated deity - Aphroditus - who shares the look of hers and has men’s genitalia. The rites of Aphroditus were celebrated by with a festival of transvestite communities of the ancient world, of which we know very little to the date. It is believed that Aphroditus arrived in Athens from Cyprus - several depictions of them came down to us in form of archaeological finds, one of which is preserved in Nationalmuseum in Stockholm and in the works of writers and historians such as Pausanias, Philostratus and Alicphron.
The archetype of Aphrodite in all her layers of multiplicity and complexity represents the infinite richness of the concept of love.