IN THE STUDIO: Martha Dimitropoulou
Martha Dimitropoulou was the first to go out into the woods and started taking pictures on Friday, March 13, 2020, a world that started changing dimensions and balances… A day that will be engraved in our memory for the coming years. Like the relationships that grow and develop with the people who have more in common over time, looking at her 3 photographs, I contacted her and asked her to present them in our magazine with a creative dialogue. I know Martha Dimitropoulou since she was a student at the Athens School of Fine Arts in Athens, I appreciate her work very much, but above all her and her life attitude which is in line with mine. Thus, we turnover the relationship of internal-external and nature became a huge creative workshop, through her photos, Martha Dimitropoulou invites us to browse “When the Wolf is not Here”, To Martha and to her own need and momentum, I owe her a big thank you, for the idea of a new dialogue that started in our magazine, column-by-column… evolving day by day…
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Martha Dimitropoulou Archive
Martha Dimitropoulou, on the occasion of your works-photographs entitled “When The Wolf Isn’t Here”, would you like to tell us, how they are connected with your series of pine-needles sculptures and explain us how emerged?
Nature and especially vegetation has always been my main source of inspiration in my work. I have used natural materials many times, sometimes intact, sometimes altered to adapt them to the specific needs of each work-installation. Even when I use other media, such as photography, I draw my subjects from nature. I consider that this the connecting element between my works. I started using pine needles in my work about ten years ago. I had recently moved into my house in the woods and the abundance of this media had already put me in the process of thinking how and what I could do with it. But the real occasion was given by an exhibition I attended, so I created my first work with pine needles.
Even though you are using a poor and humble material, your sculptures refer to symbols of wealth and power such as a Royal crown, or a diamond. How do these contradictions coexist?
I created a royal crown with a natural material that is in stark contrast to the concepts and symbols of a crown. I found very interesting to combine this humble material with symbols of wealth, domination and power. So, a series of artworks based on this relationship was created. Objects renowned for their technical integrity and the use of superior quality materials, are represented with this fragile and humble material. I use the pine needle as a unit, repeated with the same firmness that one would choose to make a clay or plaster sculpture. I’m experimenting with the durability and density of this magical material, changing the scale and volume, transforming this wood mass into a three-dimensional small sculpture or an architectural-scale installation. I presented the biggest work of the series in my solo exhibition in 2013, a Merced S500 (mainly a vehicle for the movement of power carriers) in life- size scale at Ileana Tounda Gallery. The exhaustive accuracy and time taken for the completion of the work both refer to the notions of Expensive, Unique and Valuable, while on the other hand, they state my intention to position myself in the way that the power is juxtaposed with the substance, as something that nature itself preserves or rejects. The object I have selected (symbol of wealth, domination and power) is weakened by the fragile form it acquires and loses its socio-political character, indirectly undermining the means of exercising and representing power.
In a very difficult time for humanity, like this one, that we are experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic, results a really very optimistic series like the “When The Wolf Isn’t Here”. How the series began? How do went from sculpture to photography?
Photography has accompanied me for many years in my work. My photos were the starting point for the creation my paintings. In addition, some of my in-situ installations with natural materials have been photographed and exhibited in this way. I am in permanent vigilance, constantly evaluating the images that pass in front of my eyes. For me photography is part of my daily routine and it is as natural as my breathing. These very difficult days of self- preservation, I am lucky enough living at the foot of Mount Parnitha. All of these photos occur during a walk, a short distance from my house. Controlled in one hand , but escape at the other. Physically, mentally and spiritually.
This series, although is in color, looks like there is no color, how did that come about?
Today the sun did not come out. there is only this fog that turns away the colors of the forest. Whole trees are transformed into shadows, outlines, making the imagination give birth to figures. The escape points are erased inside fog. The hoarseness of a dog’s poor mouth, interrupts me while chasing the shots. Tarkovsky comes to mind automatically “Curiously, even though the world is colored, the black-and-white image draws closer to the psychological, naturalistic truth of art, because it is based on separate properties of both sight and hearing”.
Really, once we mentioned hearing and sound, what is the sound of the forest and how do you record in this series?
The sound of the forest. How can you visualize the sound through a static image? Perhaps the image recalls the experiences everyone has inside him. “Ready to speak” commented a friend of mine about one of the pictures where the almond tree, well-known protagonist of Spring, hastens with her pink nails and tear apart winter’s gray. Life and death are permanent opponents. Only in this bras de fer we’re all tuned now.
Life and death. Therefore, the perpetual existential question oscillates you. What is your message through “When The Wolf Isn’t Here”, a very lice title, who is the Wolf and who is the Red Riding Hood at the given time?
For a month now, the message of a threat is gradually reinforcing, right now we are shaken from its deafening sound and it colors our senses in a very special way. A constant reminder of the inevitable. Personally, these last few days as I open my eyes and continue to feel healthy myself and my loved ones all, I experience the taste of happiness. From the time human becomes aware of his perishable nature, he invents ways consciously or unconsciously to forget it. Art has a way of helping. These photographic walks are multifaceted, perhaps resemble my own path in this world. “Where there is death I do not exist and where I exist there is no death” as Irvin D. Yalom writes at “Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death”. This is where the title, “When the Wolf is Not Here”, is spontaneously born.
Download Greek Version of Interview here.
First Publication: www.dreamideamachine.com
© Interview-Efi Michalarou
Martha Dimitropoulou (born 1972) in Athens, Greece. She earned a B.F.A in 1997 from Athens School of Fine Arts, Greece. She continued her studies in London with a scholarship provided by the Board of State Scholarships Foundation. There she earned an M.F.A from RCA and a PD in Fine Arts from UeL. In December 2013 she has had her second solo exhibition at Ileana Tounta Gallery, Athens, Greece. Her work has been exhibited in group shows such as: 2019: “Garden Variations”, The Symptom Projects #9, Old Hospital, Gardens and Private Courtyards, Amfissa, Greece, “20 years Hydra School Project”, Hydra, Greece. 2018: “Forthcoming”, Space 52, Athens, Greece ~ “Back to basics: Uncanny II”, Enia Gallery, Athens, Greece. 2017: “Integral I’’, Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center, Athens, Greece. 2016: Devalue | Value | Surplus Value. Between “work” and “art”, ISET, Athens, Greece. “Birth of coexistence”, Hellenic American Union, Athens, Greece. 2014: “Uber-Bodies”, Hydra School Project, Hydra, Greece. 2011: “Like a W(edge)”, ReMap KM Project, Metaxourgio, Athens, Greece. 2002: “Arkadia in the City”, Marble Hill House, Richmond, London, United Kingdom ~ “Strand”, Strand underground station, London, United Kingdom. She has also been participated in Art Residences like ”Epiopou” , Andros, Greece ~ “Mimicry’’, Costa Navarino Engaging Art, Messinia, Greece that took place during summer 2014.
