Martina Melilli

Close your eyes is a performative reading and a sound piece born from the dialogue with Simona Pedicini, thanatoesthete and funeral director. The dead body is the object of this dialogue that fluctuates between the distance of the regulations and sacred texts and the proximity of the direct experience of those who take care of the bodies in the immediate aftermath of their death. They are two voices in search of a balance to delimit a silent field, trying to approach with different codes what no longer has a voice. Simona is a specialized thanatoesthete, tanatopractician and funeral director. She leads training courses in tanato-aesthetics for privates and funeral homes. She has a degree in Studies on the Holy Shroud and Bibliological Sciences of the XVI and XVII centuries. She’s a researcher in History of the dissection on the female sacred body during the counter-reformation epoch. Scholar of female mystic, she publish articles about the female quietism.