sa.grado

this artistic research is part of the stage trilogy that aïda colmenero dïaz develops around her Galicia, in which she investigates the relationship with the sacred, incantation, memory, and blood.

sa.grado act II is a stage research project that explores blood as a symbolic archive and as a territory of the sacred. as a flow of memory, an invisible pact, and inherited energy.

blood as that which binds us to the land, to the bodies that preceded us, and to the stories that inhabit us. in dialogue with Galicia as an ancestral–familial–everyday–imagined space, the project delves into the ritual dimension of the contemporary body, activating blood as a metaphor for destiny, transformation, and continuity.

the creator proposes to explore how human beings have related to blood throughout time: as bond, destiny, pact, sacrifice, protection, and memory. blood as biological fluid; as lineage, territory, inheritance, and community.

it is that which connects us to those who came before us and to what we consider sacred.

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a search for what beats, what burns, and what passes through us without being named.

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“an invocation to the sacred.
not as a distant mystery, but as a living flame at our center.
may the sacred pass through us like a river of blood,
transform us like fire,
and reveal to us, once again,
that the divine has always dwelled within us.”

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author’s note

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rooted in Galicia, the project enters an imaginary landscape in which blood occupies a central place in popular cosmology. in galician tradition, shaped by the coexistence of paganism and christianity, blood has been understood as an element of power and union.

this research proposes to examine how these beliefs dialogue with our contemporary reality. blood as nourishment, as rural ritual, as pact, and as memory.

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a fundamental axis of the research is the rural ritual of the pig slaughter (matanza do porco), a central practice in many galician families. beyond its alimentary dimension, the slaughter constituted a communal act charged with meaning. blood is not a residue: it is treated with respect, transformed into food, and shared. to spill it carelessly is considered a bad omen. this moment condenses life, death, sustenance, and community into a single gesture. the research approaches this ritual as a space of transformation: the passage from life to death, from death to nourishment, and from nourishment to community. a cycle in which the everyday and the sacred merge.

likewise, the religious dimension forms an essential part of the research. in galician catholicism, the blood of christ symbolizes sacrifice, redemption, and salvation. the project seeks to question the contemporary meaning of sacrifice, asking: what are we willing to offer today? what needs to be “bled” so that a community may heal? how can sacrifice be re-signified as transformation?

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i am also interested in blood as a symbolic element, observing inherited pacts, invisible loyalties, and family or collective wounds that traverse generations.

from an artistic perspective, i am interested in the body as ritual territory; movement as heartbeat, pulsation, wound, and transformation; the stage space as land that receives and listens; the voice as invocation of the invisible. the aim is to generate an experience in which the biological and the spiritual enter into dialogue, where the audience perceives blood as vital flow and embodied memory.

this project situates itself at the crossroads of ritual anthropology, studies on the sacred and the profane, embodied memory, and galician popular tradition, in dialogue with contemporary performative practices. my intention is to re-signify the rural and the everyday—those imaginaries—from a current, critical, and personal perspective, and from there to recover their symbolic and poetic potency.

it is also an invocation. an attempt to remember that the sacred is not a distant mystery, but an energy that dwells within us. that blood—beyond its materiality—is a symbolic river that unites who we were, who we are, and who we will be at the same time. and that perhaps, by touching the earth again—even metaphorically—we may hear the echo of our ancestors and understand that the divine is not outside us, but beating within our own body.”

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aïda colmenero dïaz

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