ART CITIES: London-Artemis Potamianou
Artist and curator currently based in Athens, Artemis Potamianou completed her BA (Fine Arts) at the Athens School of Fine Arts in 1997 and subsequently received an MA degree from Staffordshire University (1999) where she continued on to her MPhil/PhD degree. Early on her career she experimented with painting and then moved on. She is also, founder and Director of Platforms Project– Independent Art Fair.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Artemis Potamianou Archive
It should be noted that Artemis Potamianou is a conceptual artist that she works really very hard and she doesn’t make any moral discounts. During the economical and moral crisis in Greece she did not give up her attribute, on the contrary she created a perfectly conceptual installation based on a custom of Central Europe. Artemis Potamianou’s in “Which side are you on?” composes an environmental narrative by the installation she presents at Cable Depot, referring to the totality of female conditions, which she juxtaposes with the idea of the as yet unrealized dream of freedom and true equality. Jacques Deval said “God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved birds and invented cages”. In Central Europe, the rich groom gifted his bride a cage with a bird which symbolically she had to make it fly, demonstrating in practice how capable they were to be mothers and wives, so the exhibition area is metaphorically transformed into a cage that houses elaborate bird-cages which in turn host smaller cages, creating circumstances where through symbolic objects the women’s issue is being negotiated, its extensions in time, as well as the socio-political events that are related to what is more relevant than ever!!! Across many belief-systems and religions, the bird is symbolic of the soul. So, a caged bird speaks to an unhealthy inner life or soul. This was a thought that was expressed by Carl Jung, in evoking a sense of the caged spirit, but why do we feel caged in the modern world? The cage as a metaphoric symbol speaks to the disciplinisation of freedom. In 1930, the sociologist Max Weber, coined the term ‘iron cage’ to refer to the increased rationalisation inherent in the development of Western capitalism societies “Puritanism has played a part in creating the ‘iron cage’ in which modern man has to exist – an increasingly bureaucratic order from which the ‘spontaneous enjoyment of life’ is ruthlessly expunged. George Ritzer believes that modern society has taken this a step further, discussing Weber’s ‘iron cage’ he believes that “A society characterized by rationality is one which emphasizes efficiency, predictability, calculability, substitution of nonhuman for human technology, and control over uncertainty…. The model of rationalization, at least in contemporary America, is no longer the bureaucracy, but might be better thought of as the fast-food restaurant. As a result, our concern here is with what might be termed the “McDonaldization of Society”. “Which side are you on?” is an immersive exhibition, not only in terms of artistic look, but in terms of meaning and the power and sensitivity that deals with these issues.
Photo: Artemis Potamianou, Which side are you on-Keys, © Artemis Potamianou, Courtesy the artist and Cable Depot Gallery
Info: Cable Depot Gallery, 8 Submarine Cable Depot (Bottom of Warspite Road & Right), London, England, Duration: 3/9-7/12/2022, https://cable-depot.com/
