XANAS. 2013

XANAS is a series of performance stills in which Gilbert channels a constellation of archetypal beings across the coastal and mountainous landscapes of Asturias. Wrapped in furs, veils, and ceremonial garments, the artist moves through caves, cliffs, and tidal inlets as priestess, sin-eater, nymph, fox and water-initiate, using the body as a temporary vessel through which local mythologies can surface and speak.

Working intuitively, Gilbert treats each site as a sentient collaborator: drawing, listening, and responding to the “unseen” energies of rock, sea, and forest before staging small, improvised rites. Eyes are painted onto stones, shells become votive bowls, and flowers or found objects are arranged as offerings that remain after the body has left, marking the spot like subtle portals.

Named after the Xanas, water goddesses of Asturian folklore, the project weaves personal ritual with indigenous cosmology, proposing performance as a way to slip through the membrane between worlds. Rather than impose a fixed narrative, the work trusts in encounter and listening, leaving almost no trace beyond these modest gifts to the earth and the photographic records of a body briefly merged with place, acting as messenger between landscape, myth, and the viewer.