Odette Kouzoutzoglou M.A. '19
“heritage under (de)construction” is a selection of performance documentations and video-performances by three female visual artists from Greece; Anna Papathanasiou, Maria Louizou and Eleni Tsamadia. This selection of performances aims to investigate the cultural particularities enabled by the artists’ practices and work through notions of the “traditional”, by utilizing a contemporary vision and aesthetic. The featured artists engaging with performance practices are re-thinking narratives of Greek heritage through a subversive mode of performing the ancient, the historical and the sacred, in order to blur it’s “structural seams”and comment on its construction. All three of them are exploring Greek cultural elements in order for them to be deconstructed and rethought in a contemporary critical context.
Odette Kouzou (b. 1994) lives and works in Athens as a curator and a researcher. She holds a Masters’s degree in Performance Studies / Tisch School of the Arts / NYU (2019) and a Bachelors’s in Art History from Athens School of Fine Arts (2017). With a background in art history, she operates through the lens of various feminisms to curate, research, write and meditate on contemporary art and performance matters. She has been involved in various creative environments, such as Snehta Residency, Hyle (founded by Georgia Sagri) and ArtAthina2019. Currently, she works as a research and curatorial assistant alongside Aphrodite Gounou (Contemporary Art Advisor of the Museum of Cycladic Art (Athens) and Chisenhale Gallery (London). She also works as a production associate of Greece in USA (founded by Curator Dr. Sozita Goudouna). Finally, she has been nominated as an emerging curator for Whitechapel and NEON Curatorial Exchange Program 2020.
Kouzou made this selection of performance documentations and video-performances gives the opportunity for international audiences to discover works of Greek artists and engage with an art scene, they weren't familiar with before.
EAT by Anna Papathanasiou, presented live in New York (2018), during the “The Time Bomb Gala at the Watermill Center under the direction of Robert Wilson.
“Eat” is a two hour long performative piece in which the artist consumes her bust and head sculpture made out of white chocolate. It was selected and performed as part of the Time Bomb Gala at the Watermill center and reprised at the Discover Watermill day, under the direction of Robert Wilson in New York. “When one attempts to interpret any kind of structure, say a language or a universe, it is a common approach to begin by locating the archetypal forms within it. When the structure one attempts to ‘read’ is one’s ‘self’, I suggest he/she creates archetypal versions of the ‘self’ itself, in this case the cannibal. The Cannibal aesthetically resembles statues that derive from the ancient Greek sculpture. The work depicts the moment one discovers the process of self-consumption. The Cannibal begins to devour him/herself as a manifestation of a self-destructive practice. Time is a significant factor in order for a person to identify the reason why the self-consuming cannibal appears as an obsolete statue that we can only passively study like archaeologists. Adrian Trikas-Pandis
Works by Maria Louizou: “The Passage” presented at the EMST (2018), “The Monument” presented in an empty industrial area resembling a monologue or lament, while the image derives from the Kores of Erechtheion.
The “Passage”, 2017, wool and metal, 750 x 235 x 305 cm. National Museum of Contemporary Art, EMST, 2018. “The Passage” is created from ninety kilos of wool woven on an upright loom. It stands on a semi-circular frame exceeding human height and there is a row of the same material. They serve as cases to receive specific parts of the human body and are inhabited by seven singers per hour. While the performers put on the elements of the piece, the whole composition looks like a revival of a monument’s frieze. This piece focuses on how civilization deals with personal loss and renders it collective. An archetypal, warm embrace opens before the spectators as a kind of rebirth and collective caring.
“The Monument”, 2016, handcraft and metal, 700 x 750 x 500 cm. Library of Athens School of Fine Arts. “The Monument” is an ensemble comprising three parts: a suspended piano, an upright body with its head in it, and a performer in this position who sings a tune from Lesbos. The piece is presented in an empty industrial area which allows the echo to turn the melodies and the lyrics into extended sounds. What you hear resembles a monologue or lament, while the image derives from the Kores of the Erehtheion. The piano with a concealed metal frame is draped in a white handcrafted cloth, while the female figure is dressed in the same cloth, so that it functions as a complete body, with the piano for head. This piece speaks of the impossible marriage of a female figure with her local history, and at the same time of the insistence of the body and the spirit to be part of a whole with an identity and a history to narrate.
Works by Eleni Tsamadia: “Venus De Milo” video is an attempt of an exact reproduction of Aphrodite of Milos. “Divine particles” a physical performance on a digital environment.
Eleni Tsamadia is a visual artist based in Athens/Greece. She received her bachelors and master's degree from the ASFA. Her practice is concept driven and spread through different mediums. She has so far created two solo projects and taken part in various group shows in Greece and abroad. Her latest work focuses on painting and raises the question on how the body is being represented through that medium nowadays.
“Venus De Milo” video is an attempt of an exact reproduction of Aphrodite of Milos. No official permission was granted for this reproduction to be conducted but the artist's urge to study the classics overpowered the law.
“Divine particles” is a physical performance on a digital environment. This short video action is based upon the idea of experiencing infinity. How does infinity Looks or feels? How the stories about it and the actual concept differs? How do our selves become infinite by their digital appearance and their random distribution?