Urban utopias & dystopias
A city (urbs in Latin, hence the adjective "urban") is a miniature universe, a unit mirroring a totality; a living, evolving microcosm with its own internal, intrinsic and intricate rules and laws, the mysteries and secrets that haunt it, the tales and legends that define it.
UrbsTopia U & UrbsTopia Dys Tarot decks (February-March 2019) pay tribute to the deepest, most obscure heart of human cities, the skeletons - literal and figurative - hiding in closets, basements, sewers, the monsters lurking in dark corners: ghosts, spirits and apparitions, bizarre creatures in the streets, unknown objects in the sky, unresolved crimes, festering wounds and guilty consciences.
The traditional Major Arcana figures are reinvented in a modern, often subversive manner, their symbolisms re(en)coded and expanded into a philosophical, sometimes humorous, macabre or even deliberately grotesque view of the standard Tarot emblems and connotations.
In the UrbsTopia card sets, each trump is personified by a Greek mythological figure - though not necessarily corresponding to their archetypal attributes. Ancient gods and deities are formally dead, but their skeletons still inhabit - and perpetually brace - the underground networks of every city, sacrificially entombed in its foundations.
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