A BROAD THINKING

Artemis Eleftheriadou

The meaning and the value of the “museum project”, although under constant challenge, remain vital. For, the process in which the familiarization and interaction of the general public with art and art histories occurs, is always open to new propositions. The necessity to establish a museum culture has been effectively challenged and revalued. The Casoria International Contemporary Art Museum promotes a vigorous program, in an effort to compose a collection of art works by international contemporary artists. During the Triennial program, a collection of 300 artworks will be achieved, and these artworks will eventually constitute the Permanent Collection of the Museum. Governed by a broad, diverse thinking, the museum promotes an alternative to already established and familiar notions of art and art history. In the absence of an authoritative disposition, the Casoria International Contemporary Art Museum explores its new potentials, hoping to grow more and more active in the cultural life of the broader community. Interestingly, the museum invites and brings forth artists from various places, including those, which have been consistently overlooked by the leading tendencies of contemporary art. This particular intension allows for a multiplicity of new and alternative views to be voiced, alongside the more traditional or established artistic discourses.

In the current exhibition, “100 Artist for a Museum” which inaugurates the Triennial project of the museum, Cyprus participates with four works, contributed by Klitsa Antoniou, Melita Couta, Panayiotis Michael and the artist group Two four two. As art often becomes the means for connecting the personal and the social, the private and the political, illusion and reality, or even life and art practice, the four proposals by Cyprus are teamed together to explore a wide range of such issues arising in the context of contemporary culture. It is more accurate to say that, their coming together was materialized taking into account their differences in terms of art practice, subject matter and process. Expectantly, the works will offer a brief, yet a representative understanding of the current Cypriot art scene.

It is notable that, in Klitsa Antonious' work (Regina, 2004), the central place is occupied by an interrelation of parallel, yet equally semantic, private and political understandings, aiming to tackle history, culture and privacy. In the current state of affairs where geographical, political and cultural borders are rather fluid or even dysfunctional, Antoniou tries to involve micro and macro politics regarding ones private and sociopolitical identity. While boundaries became flexible and cultural structures shifted their focus, there is an even stronger desire towards exploring one’s private context and the need of belonging, since finding one’s personal identity involves to a great extent his/her understanding of place-ness. As though abandoned in the mist of a working place, the work negates a highly staged exhibiting character. A photograph of a naked woman as seen from behind lies plainly on two wooden tripod legs, left for the speculating eyes of the viewer. Her hands are folded behind, in a shy gesture to hide her nakedness, emphasized by the harsh, natural light. What is rather difficult to notice is that under the table-like composition, a historical map of the Mediterranean is placed. Surprisingly, the island of Cyprus assumes the same position as the woman's sexual organs. An often-reoccurring element in Antonious' work is the inclusion of hidden information that needs to be discovered and functions as the punch-line to the seeming work. The two-dimensional depiction of the island is surrounded by the powerful presence of natural sea weed, a common natural element of the island’s sea coast, suggesting pubic hair shown from the lying figure. Constant political turmoil and often occupation by a series of foreign states has marked, even currently, the islands' history and identity. Beside the search of the island’s belonging and position in geographical maps of Western origin, Antoniou juxtaposes the understanding of the female body -or better, her own body- as a cultural sign searching for its own parameters of sexuality and identity. The female body -her body- becomes the battleground of desire and rejection, in the same way as the island becomes the territory in which Cypriots are still struggling to comprehend and define their multiple roles and identities. More so in a time that geographically, politically and culturally the island belongs both to the West and the East.

Caught between abjection and beauty, Melita Coutas’ female bust, (Rose, 2004), evokes a spectrum of contrasting emotional states. Whereas the work is an apparent, sharply phrased thought arousing the nature of the female psyche and the politics that govern it, the bust also falls into an uneasy condition caused by material displacement and an eerie manipulation of the human body. The pose of the bust imitating that of a statue, with a purposely-cut limb, asserts that there is no effort to mimic life. Instead, the work calls for the prototypes of beauty set by the Greek-roman classical tradition. Beauty becomes a painful issue, as the bust is stripped off its skin, the surface upon which the qualities of physical beauty are inscribed. Ironically, under the absent skin lies the fiber of flesh, meticulously studied and interpreted; as each muscle is vividly exposed. Muscles and fibers of the flesh are made out of endless, long, female hair, sign of beauty and virility. Resistant to natural decay, even after death, hair in this work achieves an almost uncanny displacement. What is familiar, erotic and beloved, now becomes the means to portray the clinical reality of human anatomy when stripped off the skin. Attention to the ways in which a woman perceives her own body and sexuality is articulated in Couta’s work, as the figure becomes aware of her own image while she gazes gracefully her mirror reflection. This figure-bust is brutally exposed and aware of the viewers’ sight, provoking his/her pity and repulsion. Victimization and abuse that current culture and fashion have inflicted upon women are not only suggested but rather bluntly 'carved' onto the physicality of the body. As in Helen Chadwick’s twisted intestine together with a fine, blonde, plaid of hair, Couta, in her work, explores the relation of exterior and interior, vanity and decay, desire and pain. The work however also functions beyond this apparent embodiment of primarily 'feminist issues' as it also captures a sense of oniric imagery. This is achieved by the use of irrational displacement and the coexistence of contradictory conditions, while the work assumes a language of the past, a nightmarish overtone and an ambiguous sexuality.

While one can not deny the compelling need to communicate a thought, a moment, a landscape, it is quite debatable weather such a task may be achieved in its wholeness. The elusive nature of re-verbalizing or re-enacting an experience reinforces the realization of some untranslatable qualities. Likewise, the process towards an artwork undergoes a series of painstaking stages negotiating the inability of creating what really lies in the artists’ mind. Often, whatever it has been intended to be done eventually takes an inevitable course to meet an impulsive necessity: reaching the viewer. In that sense, the exhibited art work may never be considered as finished but rather, always, in the process of an on going, never ending evolution. What the viewer sees is merely a frozen moment, a snapshot in the passing of time. With an almost obsessive persistence, Panayiotis Michael composes methodologically an image of layered diagrams, plans, routes, mappings of spaces or situations, (To Approach You – Plan 2, 2002-2003). Resembling architectural cityscapes, webs, channeling detailed in a fascinating fashion, this bizarre map articulates impossible imaginary fields of perception. Struggling to make sense out of chaos, he constitutes his unrealized thoughts by graphically translating the minds’ minor failings, dead ends, obsessive repetitions and desirable details. In Italo Calvino’s novel “Invisible Cities” Marco Polo describes to Kublai Khan the cities he has visited. Khan listens to the young explorer in excitement and with suspicion concerning the truthfulness of his telling. Whichever the case, however, both Khan and the reader become swayed by the vivid and rich descriptions of cityscapes. There is a quality of euphoria and seduction in imagining what it is impossible to see or communicate in reality. Involved in an endless playful process, Michael ‘gives up’ on the actualization of his impossible artwork and results in graphically registering the desire, the planning and thinking of it. The mapping of a mindscape is frozen in time. It is translated in a static aesthetic result, which reflects the energy, the passion and torment during the moment of its creation.

The highly staged, the somehow sculptural photography shown by Two four two employs the image of themselves, as the sentimental evidence of their private cosmos, articulated in the public context. Pre-constructed identities dictated by fashion and marketing are constantly questioning one’s relationship with one’s own identity. My body no longer belongs to me and neither does its sexual behavior and identity. The use of the light box in 242's work (Personal Grids, 2004), which at times makes references to advertising billboards found in bus stops, train stations or even shop decorations, is a reoccurring element. Masked under the use of portrait photography, the work investigates the realization of one’s private identity as a vehicle of emotional discourse entering the public domain. A domain which is not only aesthetically demanding, but also seeks for acceptable social behaviors. Whereas the light boxes appear ordinary and straightforward, a grid of aluminum bars, part of industrial light fixings, is applied on top of them causing an endless mirror effect. Fragments of the images are perpetually reflected enriching the visual depth and forming a firm grid, keeping the viewer in and out of the image and verifying the hesitation and need of the private becoming public. The imagery involved in the work carries a quality of affect provoked by both their honesty and suggestive alterations, their antique-like black and whiteness, as well as by their reference to familiar, pre-constructed public identities. There is a subtle ambiguity whether the faces portrayed are beautified or x-rayed medically, under the fluorescent lights. Are these harsh, clinical light boxes or luxurious advertising displays? 242 employ highly industrial materials disengaged from the process of making. Because of this, most of the work appears almost found, as a design element that interacts with the architectural vocabulary of the space. Further, the work provokes the viewer 'to read on the surface', in the same way that contemporary advertising portrays the body. It is rather peculiar, and perhaps the strongest element of 242's work, that while they use industrial materials, highly perfected finishes and there is a clear absence of hand treatment, the work becomes rather introspective, as well as intensely expressive, arousing emotional tension.

Nicosia, April 2005