Nina Danino reanimates the sculptural installation The Ecstasy of St Teresa by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. She shakes the statue back to life through film, bringing to it hot gardens, green cardinals and breathing sexual ecstasy onto the cold marble skin.
The once living Teresa of Avila wrote about her brushes with death:
"They gave me the Sacrament of Extreme Unction, and in every minute of every hour thought that I was dying. They never stopped reciting the creed to me, as though I could have heard what was said. At times they were so sure that I was dead that afterwards I actually found some wax on my eyelids... For a day and a half a grave was left open in my convent, waiting for my body, and the rites for the dead were performed at the friary of our order a short distance away."
St Teresa lived her life on the cusp of death, in the realm of vision. A vision without the need for eyes. Danino tells us that the priest transfers the dead body into the living body, and drags old black and white footage into the present, by letting it convene with the undead marble of Teresa. Teresa, once awakened by Danino, is repeatedly seized back from the shadows with each viewing by you and I. Now I am yours, she says.