NEW COMERS: Christina Mitrentse

Cristina Mitrentse, is an artist who simultaneously curates exhibitions, she lives and works in London, her focus point of her work and investigation is the book in all its ramifications. The Jewish Museum of Greece, alongside with the wounded books in an extremely interesting exhibition entitled “Re/SPOND/INVENT/CREATE“, presents objects, arising but also co-exist with the culture and history of the Jews, who as we all know, carry a heavy legacy. In close collaboration with her curator Mrs. Mina Karagianni, presents another version and new dimensions of the past through Contemporary Art.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Mina’s Karagianni Archive

Mrs. Mitrentse, on the occasion of your exhibition at the Jewish Museum of Greece, would you like to tell us how did came the idea of this exhibition?
The idea of this exhibition was initiated after a long conversation about the artifacts of the Jewish Museum of Greece and exchange of curatorial strategies with my collaborator Mina Karagianni who is the curator of this exhibition. We continued to discuss my projects after our first collaboration on Meditations on e-books. I talked to Mina in 2011 about Linear B, my curated project and symposium at the time, at Stephen Lawrenece Gallery, London, in which I invited contemporary established artists to respond to artworks in the idiosyncratic contemporary collection of Nikos Alexiou. We then wanted to do a solo exhibition in Greece in relation to a ‘difficult’ museum collection rather than a solo show in a gallery which I had many. I wanted to negotiate with the museum as a conceptual and theoretical mode of contemporary curatorial and art practice .The Museum as a role and its relationship with contemporary art. I wanted to respond to this particular collection. We proposed a collaboration in the Museum through Artemis Alcalay which new my work and research. The director of the Jewish museum was very positive and enthousiastic towards the works proposed.
Your main concept, is the use of the museum objects, the mutation, and the opening of the boundaries between ready-made objects that have historical significance and contemporary art, which was the challenge and the difficulty for you?
The biggest challenge for us was the fact that this is the first time the Jewish Museum of Greece has invited and hosted a contemporary art exhibition of this sort, within its premises. I think it is a new challenge for the museum in dealing with an external, ‘invader’/collaborator, researcher/responder/creator but I believe the results had paid back all the hard work. Being aware that the Museum is one of the prototype museums with a narrative of so called ‘difficult heritage’ there was a particular weight on how I create works in response to the rich history of Greek-Jewish culture.
We know that for the last two years you are preparing this exhibition, in cooperation with your curator Mrs. Mina Karagianni. What were the objective difficulties you encountered and what experiences you had, that denatured them in artworks?
Indeed ! Yes it has been a great pleasure and honor for me to have been working on this project for the last two years. I am fortunate enough to have a responsible and professional curator who supported me and the museum at all stages of this project. The difficulties were few. However my research and study prior to the creation of works was extended to Jewish archives and libraries in London, to find accounts from Jewish friends in London and beyond, which made the working process fairly slow, yet it was very inspiring. My aim was to create an exhibition that can be seen as a “study”, a pictorial review/look into history, the religious tolerance/intolerance, the education, the museum as a place, as a concept and as a role and to create a poetic response to the ‘sensitive’ artifacts of the museum.
Your artworks coexist throughout the Museum but also in the Synagogue, located in the ground floor, this space is used for the first time for contemporary art, how important is it for you?
The artworks had been made and displayed in dialogue with the permanent collection. They are ‘inserted’ in the cabinets and displayed in all levels and in parallel with the main artifacts/objects in between the spaces. The Synagogue is on the ground floor which is the most symbolically challenging area of the museum. Its a functioning area, particularly during the summer period, and I am particularly honored to have been allowed to create and display specific works in response. I have displayed new handmade leather and text based papyrus artifacts within the ‘Ticks’ cabinets and screen print editions on the wall, which reference religious books ,as well as in an important cabinet which houses various valuable silver & gold ‘Tama’. I do not try however, to alter or to rank the works and to present them in a systematic way. I re-create, Re-discover, Re-spond, extend, and keep the dialogue open and alive.
As always, among of your artworks, there are books, since they are not only part of all your work but also part of your course to date and a research field that is your major concern. Like your work in progress…project Metalibrary. Here you are showing the Wounded Books, You would like to talk about them and how they arise?
The ‘Wounded Books’ are an on-going sculptural series I conceived in 2008 and executed as a response and research, amongst others, to the history of the book destruction. They directly reference the bombing of Libraries, schools and educational centres and executions by the Nazi Regime during WW2, the destruction of education and language. But mainly I see the ‘wounded’ body of knowledge in parallel with the wounded Jewish human body. The works reflect on the damage to humanity, the genocide and the loss of material knowledge. For the Jewish Museum of Greece I have collaborated with and selected publications from the archive of the Wiener Library in London, the biggest Holocaust and Genocide archive/museum in UK. With these 13 Publications which include ‘I was Hitler’s Prisoner’, ‘Vittel Diary’, The Trial of German Major war Criminals, then I ‘touch’ the Holocaust, a topic that is a huge wound for all mankind. The injured books have the solemn air of bibliographic relics, books that have been laid to rest, codex’s whose yellowing pages support content that has become fossilized. Here, a bullet hole is as telling as an ISBN or shelf mark. Their ‘deaths’ also indicate that the book, be it fact or fiction, stitched or glued is a foot soldier in the never ending war of ideas, by means of which humanity evolves. These books have been shot with a Winchester 4.8 Caliber Rifle, under licensed conditions in London. They are displayed, sealed in plastic, with both their front (with a neat site of penetration) and back (with a larger, rippled, raised and ruptured exit site) cover visible. This ‘performative act’ is absolutely not vandalism, it is rather a ‘homage’, which also explores the possibilities opened up by conceptualist approaches to writing and performative approaches to reading within contemporary society, and the subjection to the advanced capitalism in which it exists. Selected sculptures have been acquired by special private and public collections, including the Book Arts at UWE, the Library of Philosophy & Art University of Barcelona, the Chelsea College of Art & Design Library special collections, Women’s Art Library Goldsmiths University, Book Art Centre NY, and the National Library in Baghdad. The Wounded Books are Courtesy Nadine Feront Gallery Brussels and Depo Darm Athens.
At the opening, you will make a performance, let’s talk about it, tell us why you are combining all the artistic media what it means for you and what about your relationship with the audience?
I am a multidisiplinary artists. I aim to create new poetic ensembles composed by multiple materials and expressive means where various ‘communities’ come together in this exchange. I negotiate the collection and the dialectical relationship between contemporary art and art production. As part of my on-going #Add to my library #ATML International Book Art project I perform a series of METALIBRARY, interactive and participatory floor based installations, physically experienced by the audience as site -specific interventions in art centres, libraries, galleries and museums. During the preview at the Jewish museum I will construct a new “Meta-Library” along with the public. The audience is invited to bring and add their own favorite book (on loan) in order to expand the content of the continual “Bibliographic Data Flow”.

First Publication: www.dreamideamachine.com
© Interview – Efi Michalarou

Info: “RE/SPOND-ΙΝVENT-CREATE”, Jewish Museum of Greece, Nikis 39, Athens, Duration: 11/5-11/9/15, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri: 9:00-14:30, Sun: 10:00-14:00, Sat: Closed, www.jewishmuseum.gr/en

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