ELECTRA, COMPLEX

ELECTRA, COMPLEX

• Publishing Company:

  THE BKS AGENCY

• Imprint:

• Format:

  ONE SHOT

• Creator(s):

  K BRIGGS (AUTHOR, ILLUSTRATOR)

• Number of Pages:

  140

• Publication Date:

• Age:

  ADULT

• Fiction/Non-Fiction

  FICTION

• Key words:

  FAMILY, RELATIONSHIPS, GREEK MYTHOLOGY, LITERARY ADAPTATION,

• Summary:

  A graphic adaptation of Euripides’ ancient play, responded to by K. Briggs, whose own dysfunctional family dynamics are depicted in counterpoint.

   

  ELECTRA, COMPLEX is a conversation on the page. Euripides’ Electra is a 2,500 year old play that is still performed and taught today. It tells the story of two siblings, Electra and Orestes, seeking justice for the murder of their father Agamemnon by their mother Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. Carl Jung later coined the term “Electra complex” to describe a daughter’s competition with her mother for her father’s attention and the name Electra is still shorthand for an unhealthy mother-daughter-father relationship.

   

  Briggs connects their process of cutting contact with their abusive mother to Electra’s quest to murder Clytemnestra, and the reunion of Electra with her brother Orestes as a metaphor for embracing their gender expression as a non-binary person.

   

  Visually Briggs’ work uses collage to create a patchwork narrative, personal, pieced-together over time, alive with flaws and corrections.