They are sometimes called the "Western Maidens", the "Daughters of Evening", or Erythrai, and the "Sunset Goddesses", designations all apparently tied to their imagined location in the distant west. A certain Crete, possible eponym of the island of Crete, was also called one of the Hesperides. Their names were: Aegle, Erythea, Arethusa, Hestia, Hespera, Hesperusa, and Hespereia. He believed that they were the seven Hesperides, nymph daughters of Atlas and Hesperis. Petrus Apianus attributed to these stars a mythical connection of their own. A pyxis has Hippolyte, Mapsaura, and Thetis. An ancient vase painting attests the following names as four: Asterope, Chrysothemis, Hygieia, and Lipara on another seven names as Aiopis, Antheia, Donakis, Calypso, Mermesa, Nelisa, and Tara. However, the historiographer Diodorus in his account stated that they are seven in number with no information of their names. Apollodorus gives the number of the Hesperides also as four, namely: Aigle, Erytheia, Hesperia (or Hesperie), and Arethusa while Fulgentius named them as Aegle, Hesperie, Medusa, and Arethusa.
In addition, Hesperia, and Arethusa, the so-called "ox-eyed Hesperethusa". Hesiod says that these "clear-voiced Hesperides", daughters of Nyx (night), guarded the golden apples beyond Ocean in the far west of the world, gives the number of the Hesperides as four, and their names as: Aigle (or Aegle, "dazzling light"), Erytheia (or Erytheis), Hesperia ("sunset glow") whose name refers to the colour of the setting sun, red, yellow, or gold and lastly Arethusa. In another source, they are named Aegle, Arethusa, and Hesperethusa, the three daughters of Hesperus. Hyginus in his preface to the Fabulae names them as Aegle, Hesperie, and Aerica. Apollonius of Rhodes gives the number of three with their names as Aigle, Erytheis, and Hespere (or Hespera). Nevertheless, among the names given to them, though never all at once, there were either three, four, or seven Hesperides. Each can inhabit that space and rejoice in the prodigious strength it holds within.The Garden of the Hesperides by Frederick, Lord Leighton, 1892. Soto evokes an intimate, universal space, as she refers us to the personal experience of all women, no matter what their status or ethnicity, from any time and place in the world.
Through body language, movement and dance, artist, choreographer, playwright and performer Alicia Soto recreates the rituals of the Hesperides, drawing on aesthetic and cultural features from the Morocco’s feminine imaginary: women in the hammam, women weavers, women who gather seaweed in the ocean, illiterate women, educated women, young and old women, female artists. Located somewhere in the south of the Iberian Peninsula or in the Moroccan Atlas, this prodigious garden symbolizes the link between the two cultures.
According to Greek mythology, the Hesperides were nymphs in charge of caring for and watching over the sacred garden where the golden apples grew, fruits that conferred immortality.
This is a Spanish-Moroccan project created by Alicia Soto after a process of performing research with Moroccan and Spanish women in both Casablanca and Valladolid.
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