TRIBUTE: Weaving The Future VII or Traditional Practices-Contemporary Trauma

The exhibition ”Weaving the Future” is a work in progress project, an open workshop of ideas, where from 2019 until today… tried to create a dialogue between Greek women artists, aiming to unite women from the past to the future, since the manual labor of our ancestors, through the eyes and means of contemporary artists, was transformed into contemporary art, touching and cauterizing issues of significant importance.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: dreamideamachine Archive

Having thus traveled a long journey with artists and spaces that alternated, the circle of the exhibitions closes its circle in Hydra in 14 different spaces, creating a network of relationships and reflections on a topic that began in 2019 with the conviction that much has changed in the world of women, in the home and in interpersonal relationships, the exhibition ends in 2024, to explore the dimensions of a contemporary trauma resulting from the practices of the social and economic conditions of an almost polemic era after the Economic Crisis and the long period of confinement due to Covid pandemic, where gender-based violence and femicide emerged in the foreground, creating new questions that artists are invited to examine in these fields through the last part, “Weaving the Future VII or Traditional Practices – Contemporary Trauma”. The starting point of the exhibition was Athens in June 2019, where 20 artists participated, at a time when searches around the subject were non-existent, but I was very interested in this, because working in this field with memory and mnemotechnics as tools, I retrieved the image of the American artist Janine Antoni, when in January 1996 for 3 whole months, I lived next to her, every day in the exhibition space “Nikos Kessanlis”, at the Athens School of Fine Arts, where she weaved the blanket of her dreams and in the evenings connected to a brain electrical activity mapping device, recorded her dreams, to weave them in the morning on her own postmodern loom and the blanket with which she was covered. I promised myself that at some point, I would organize an exhibition with women using traditional methods and materials with new methods. The circle, as well as the quests opened by “Weaving”, was wide… It spread both in Greece and abroad. From Larissa and the Municipal Art Gallery – G.I. Katsigras Museum, in Shkodra at the Municipal Art Gallery and then in COD, the exhibition space of the Prime Minister’s Palace, in Tirana, then in Communauté Hellénique de Paris et des Environs in Paris, the exhibition made a first passage from Hydra and the Municipal Market, but also from Salamis as a landscape of origin from where the thread of history, personal and collective, unfolds. The aim of this route was to examine the role of women in the past and cottage industry as a determining economic, social and sociological factor, so throughout the route alternated places, landscapes and artists to function as a puzzle, where its fragments contribute to the creation of the image and role played by women in the new-human geography and the narrative that was composed. And while at the time this project began, there were very few women artists dealing with the subject, in the process the need for manual labor emerged as a repetitive liberating process… to conclude today as the deepest contemporary trauma since the twists and polemics that emerged from the new conditions of the Crisis, but mainly of the entrapment and self-entrapment in the post-covid era are so strong that the deeper goal is to complete this wide circle focusing on domestic violence that arises for this seventh part, It focuses on and gives meaning to contemporary trauma. Thus, the exhibition “Weaving the Future VII or Traditional Practices – Contemporary Trauma” closes the circle on Hydra, containing most of the artists who have participated and two or three young women and extends to many different institutional and non-institutional spaces. The exhibition spreads from the Lazaros Koundouriotis Historical Mansion and Tetsis Home & Studio, to small and larger dining areas, shops, offices and hotels, aiming to connect the public with the private and the familiar with the unfamiliar with a wider public, as a precursor to a Biennale to come, which will glean and summarize every two years the importance of the place, of landscape and locality, through contemporary art.

Participating Artists: Ianthi Aggellioglou, Artemis Alcalay, Ada Anastasea, Panagiota Apostolopoulou, Vicky Betsou, Ismini Bonatsou, Lamprini Boviatsou, Thalia Chioti, Elli Chrysidou, Evgenia Efstathiou, Annalina Fotopoulou, Penny Geka, Andromchi Giannopoulou, Maria Grigoriou, Katerina Kalitsounaki, Valia Karapidaki, Marigo Kassi, Evi Kirmakidou, Katerina Kokkinaki, Dimitra Konstantinidi, Despina Konstantinou, Evdokia Kyrkou, Maria Lagou, Eleni Manolaraki, Kyriaki Mavrogeorgi, Vassiliki Mylona , Aggelika Panagiotidou, Despina Pantazi, Vivi Perisynaki, Margarita Petrova, Spyridoula Politi, Zographia Popoli, Artemis Potamianou, Katerina Ribatsiou, Ifigenia Sdoukou, Chryssa Skordaki, Fani Sofologi, Eleftheria Stoikou, Konstantina Sylikou, Irini Vazοukou, Vicky Vasiliou , Grigoria Vryttia, Betty Zerva, Maria Zygomala

Photo: Eleni Manolaraki, Therapeutic exercises for the trauma of our modern national subjugation (Detail), 2024, Fabrics, embroidery, paper, tempera, herbs Dimensions variable, © & Courtesy the artist

Info: Curator: Efi Michalarou, Assistant Curators: Annalina Fotopoulou & Dimitris Lempesis, Locations: see map , Duration: 24/7-25/8/24, Days & Hours: Lazaros Koundouriotis Historical Mansion: & Tetsis Home & Studio: Daily 10:00-16:00,  Accounting Office K. I. Anastopoulos & Co: Mon-Fri 10:00-13:30 & 17:00-20:00, Papagalos Cocktail Bar: Daily 20:00- 23:00, Access to all other spaces is free without opening hours

* The exhibition is held under the auspices of the Municipality of Hydra

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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