Social uses of candles. An approach with visual materials

Abstract

States of devotion, sensual romances and esoteric rites are held in the light ofthe candles. This functional commodity is used as a ‘ritual artifact’, incorporatedwith creativity to social events of dissimilar orientation. In this paper the imageused as a resource document has revealed the ubiquity and repetition with whichcandles are lit in cultural practices as ‘atrezzo’ and/or metaphor. The analysisof four contemporary frameworks which demonstrate the presence of a ‘candlelighting’ –Decoration of public places, protest actions, popular mourning andmemorials- suggested, on the one hand, the importance of aestheticization processesand on the other hand, the centrality for this expression to evoke removethe symbolic heritage. Both mechanisms -ethics and aesthetics- described conditionsof possibility in the activation of human emotions that regulate, imperceptibly,cultural systems in social life.