Circe et al, 2024

The Greek goddess and enchantress Circe, immortalized in Homer’s The Odyssey, has been imprinted on our imaginations ever since. Sherry Wiggins has embodied and performed Circe in a series of staged photographs taken by Luís Branco as part of the HEROINES project.

In The Odyssey, we first come upon Circe on the island of Aeaea as Odysseus and his men land their ship on its shores. Circe had been banished to the island by the gods for changing the nymph Scylla into a fearsome monster.  Odysseus and his men are unaware both that Circe inhabits the island and that she possesses magical powers of transformation.

A group of Odysseus’s men are chosen to scout the island. They discover Circe’s majestic home and the tamed beasts—lions and wolves—that  surround the building. Circe invites the men in and serves them food and poisoned wine that turns the men to swine. Upon hearing of Circe’s sorcery, brave Odysseus heads out to save his men. With assistance from the god Hermes (and a magical herbal antidote), Odysseus outwits Circe and persuades her to change the swine back into men.

Odysseus and Circe become good friends and lovers. Odysseus and his men stay on the island for a year; they build back their ship and stocks and are restored by Circe’s hospitality and good graces. Circe gives Odysseus instructions and advice for the next steps of his dangerous journey home to Ithaca and sends him on his way.

We see part of this ancient story depicted in Allesandro Allori’s 1580 fresco Odysseus and Circe. Wiggins portrays the goddess Circe with her tamed lioness companions (three female models in lion masks) and with the swine (two male models in pig masks) in several performative works that serve as a feminist reenactment of the ancient tale. In the images Circe and Her Companions and Lounging with the Lions, we see Circe and the lionesses in pastoral landscapes, Circe very much the den mother to her lionesses. Circe and her breasty lionesses enjoy wine and cheese and each other in At Circe’s Table.  

Circe turns Odysseus’s men to swine in Antonio Tempesta’s1606 illustration for Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Wiggins’s Circe takes the swine out on the town in the black-and-white image Circe at the Bar. In the triptych Swine and Wine I and II and III, Circe / Wiggins looks on with mock surprise as her swine companions drink and pass out on the table.

Finally, Circe sits alone with a goblet in one hand and her wand in another, alternately triumphant and deflated while living out her divine immortality in the portraits There is no end to this story I and II, alluding to John William Waterhouse’s 1891 painting Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses.

(photography by Luís Branco)