In Search of the Sun

The project, developed as part of a 3-month artist residency with Aberdeen Art Gallery, explored the creative methods of de-modernising museum pieces. The work investigated the brass bust, Eastre, Hymn to the Sun made by the sculptor-painter J.D. Fergusson in 1924, depicting a Saxon goddess of spring. Fergusson’s piece represents a stylised portrait of his partner, the dancer Margaret Morris.

During the residency, Maja researched Fergusson’s work and inspiration in the context of the legacies of Scottish Modernism, and national identity. The research revealed that Fergusson responded to Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and in particular the solo aria “Hymn to the Sun”, which is featured in the 1914 opera Le Coq d’Or (The Golden Cockerel). Its libretto written by Vladimir Belsky derives from Alexander Pushkin’s 1834 poem The Tale of the Golden Cockerel . Maja’s film, In Search of the Sun, starts with the excerpts of this libretto.

This in-depth research allowed Maja to expand the interpretations of the Fergusson’s piece and allowed her to forward the experiences of migration in her response by drawing inspiration from oral traditions about female goddesses across Europe and Middle east.

The film depicts Maja’s interpretation of the goddess as a contemporary goddess, wrapped in an emergency blanket. She arrives to the shores of Britain and where the blanket is turned into empowering symbol of migration, a shiny and noisy flag.

Expanded further in live performances in Aberdeen and in Zurich, Maja used the sites of colonial and historical significance. In Aberdeen, a war memorial and Victorian Era pavilion of Duthie park provided a setting for interaction with the public. In Zurich, her performance took part in Neu-Oerlikon, area of the town that used to house factories producing munitions for the Third Reich. Nowadays, the site holds a migrant-diverse neighbourhood with a viewing tower that Maja used in the performance by turning it into a ‘light house’. This ‘beacon’ housed her cape after the piece and continued to echo the piece sonically providing the opportunities for the public to intervene and play with materials of the performance.