Pasifae is the name of my creative cycle I began in 2004:

it is inspired of the myth of the unlucky Minosses wife who, fallen in love with a bull, gave birth to a monstruous Minothaurus.

The nexus is visual, but not conceptual, in fact I just choose bull’s horn and the bucranio as procreation symbol.

I learnt that, between VI and VII millennium A.C., an anatolic civilization, Çatal Hüyük, gave bull great importance. Its cult saw the adoration of the Big Goddess and her husband, identified with a bull which was sacrified to show the connection between rebirth and death.

The most important prehistoric representation about the relationship between bull and woman is the Venus of Laussel in Dordogna (France), 25000-20000 years ago.

This bas relief shows some residues of red paint, largely used during the Paleolithic age like magic symbol to give life for its similarity with blood.

The figure ,pregnant, holds a horn with 13 lines cut into the horn (moon phases), as a reference to the bull and to a moon cult linked to the becoming and growth, while her pregnant tummy represents the beginning of life.