On Tuesday 30/10 at TETTIX Gallery (3, Dialeti str, Thessaloniki), from 18.30 to 19.00 performance will be held by Georgia Grigoriadou, at the exhibition "Emotional Clothing", which is included in the events "Aspects of Balkan Photography - New route in times of crisis" organized by Photography Center of Thessaloniki. The artist will complete with crochet one more doll dress in front of the public and she will hang it on the wall next to the other dresses, as part of her installation.
If you cannot attend the performance in the gallery, you can watch it live via streaming:
(video from the opening)
Saturday 13/10, 20.30'
"Emotional Clothing"
Opening of a group photography exhibition at TETTIX Gallery
Participants are: Senay Ozturk (Bulgaria/Turkey), Thanassis Raptis (Greece),
Margareta Kern (Bosnia & Herzegovina/UK), Irina Pidova (Bulgaria), Marina Provatidou (Greece), Georgia Grigoriadou
(Greece).
Curator: Thanassis Raptis
...in the frame of the manifestation under the title: "Aspects
of Balkan Photography. New route in the time of crisis", that
Photography Center of Thessaloniki organizes as its participation in
the Celebration for the 100 years from the Liberation of
Thessaloniki. This manifestation is supported by the Greek Ministry
of Civilization and the Municipality of Thessaloniki
“Emotional Clothing”
Are the clothes we wear the fashion? If we take the real meaning of the word (which is coming from the latin word 'modus', meaning 'way'), of course it is, as fashion in fact is the smart ability of a person to take care of his image, by the clothes he wears.
The familiar and casual wearings become the way to learn various aspects of reality. The clothe, a kind of applied art, but also an industrial product, a commercial product, but also a characteristic of the identity, personal choice or social order, reveals aspects of economy, technology, social organization, aesthetics, even psychology of people.
The research of the relationship between the clothe, the memory and the photography, lead us, while remaking all the works, that have been chosen to make this exhibition, to the sweet paths leading directly to our roots and finally to the liberating clearing of possible autognosy. The photographed clothes -and more the appearance of themselves in the exhibition like extraordinary sculptures- are used as a potential double tank of the memory, bring again forcefully in mind the absent body at the duration of the time.
Provatidou explores the wedding dress and the repressed feeling “Will I ever gonna dress like a bride?” as a memory catalyst.
Kern chooses to take pictures -specially in the heart of Balkans- of alternative rituals of the passage from a phase to another, like the graduation ball for a teenager, who tries to renounce without success her identity, just wearing a bad replica of a celebrity's dress and the meticulous preparation of an old woman for the clothes that she has arranged to wear to her last trip as well.
Raptis chooses a very personal and secure way to transfer his emotion to the viewer, exhibiting strictly personal, familial heirlooms.
Öztürk publicizes the well hidden personas of “weird” creatures of the night, who don't hesitate to reveal in the dark the weapons that hide painstakingly under the sun light: a maxed out way of dressing, an extreme haircut/hairstyle, a very personal habit.
Grigoriadou depicts the past, remakes the memory, participating herself physically. Knitting obsessively with the little crook “useless” little clothes for dolls, the only thing she achieve is to pay homage to her loving grandmother, who passed away.
Pidova explores by the seasons of the year the emotions that generate the “rest” of the hung, non-used clothe, when it stays free from the weight of the human body.
Thanassis Raptis - Photographer - Curator of the exhibition
Hanging Stories
“Hanging as a lack of gravity - when there is nothing to hold you on the ground, the separation from it somewhere above, somewhere beyond. To hang clothes, memories and seasons on a hanger and let them freely waving in the wind, go out of the frame and get back to it, because the snowdrops already are blooming. Starting the spring cleanings of Soul, worship the removal of winter clothing, the invasion of oxygen - time to breathe, time to sweep the snow away. Later in the summer - hanging again - dresses leave bodies, the eternal cycle of changing and redressing, the long hours in the bathroom, the short drying time. Nudity is just cause for flirting, time to rest for the bodies before the invasion of autumn. Again returning to sadness, nostalgia and the places where we were, where we will never be. Clothes and people already have their scars, quince fall into dry grass - brown garden of loneliness, where we ramble, where we return every fall. But there comes the white - paper cranes head South, the clothes are the last refuge of people, and so day after day, until the next spring.”
Vladislav Hristov
Irina Pidova (Bulgaria) was born on 1982. She studied Geodesy, Cartography and Photogrametry at the University of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geodesy in Sofia. Now she is practicing as a land surveyor. Her obsession with photography started couple of years ago, when she decided to buy her first film camera. Nowadays photography for Irina is simply a hobby and a relaxation from the long tiring working days. Still she is making film photography – finding it sufficiently romantic, surprising and funny. She always keeps near her old friend - the film camera Kiev 6C.
Irina’s first performance was in June 2012 in Sofia within the “Month of Photography” days, where she participated with her portfolio called “Hanging Stories”. www.irinapidova.blogspot.com
Irina Pidova
Creatures
of the night
Some
mysterious creatures, people… They disappear in daytime, in crowds,
they can not take a place in that wild life, they wait for the time.
These creatures are heroes of the night. Τhey
have to pretend to
be
another person, they have to hide, hide their weapons, hide their
souls. But
in the night, they are like angels in
their shiny clothes.
They
do not have their masks, personas. The
heroes, who we admire… "Isn’t everything keep traces of the
night that fascinate us."* They just can breathe, exist
in the night. We can not bump into them anywhere or anytime. "Night
crosses the day. The humanbeing, reaches the highest point in the
context of self-understanding by means of the world. This is the
unconscious world, the self-regarding and discover things never see
under the light during in daytime. At night, with the awareness of
the unconscious, through the perceived combines the daytime makes it
possible to own, much more-dimensional reality.’’**
The
places that we went through quickly are these heroes’s worlds;
streets, bars, parks, stations, holes, highs, faraways. Wight who we
saw indistinctly,
disappears until we understand are they real or not. Dream or not. If
we are lucky, we could remember the details. Mostly we remember
because they shine like stars. It is impossible to forget that! They
make us wakeful.
‘’We live in the dreamland in the night.’’*** Having dream
even we are awake.
*
Novalis
**
*** Geza von Molnar: Romantic Vision, Ethical Context: Novalis and
Artistic Autonomy. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 1987.
Şenay Öztürk
Senay
Oztürk (Bulgaria/Turkey) was born in Bulgaria on 1987.
She
graduated of Aydın Dogan Communication High School, Journalism
(2006) and Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Department of
Photography (BFA – 2011).
She
has worked as a reporter and photographer for some publications like
Hurriyet, Milliyet, Radikal, Istanbul Life and has been studying MFA
in Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Department of Photography.
Oztürk
has exhibited her work in Turkey and also in Europe.
She
is still working and living in Istanbul.
Senay Ozturk
I exhibit real clothing as if they are sculptures, as a carrier of memory which except for two dimensional aspect, conducts three dimensions, touch, smell and why not sound. Beside the integral, real sized portraits of my family members.
A t-shirt same as that my father- who has already passed away, 10 years now - used to wear in '70s, in the pottery he was working at. A t-shirt that was sweated by myself and left under the sun a whole summer.
My mother's black slip, which has gone astray but salvaged until today, the witness of adult life counting more than 50 years old.
The wool, on loom entwined nappy of my sister, witnesses also her more than 50 years of living.
Last but not least, my wool singlet, overwhelmed by memories of itching on my childish body.
Therefor, exhibiting in public our most intimate clothing, that had the most intimate contact with our bodies, I attempt myself to commune in a truth which day by day fades in the meantime of our acknowledgment that our memories are always embellished. I attempt to dive in self-acknowledgment through my emotional state. An emotional state of mind which is common to all the human beings.
Thanassis Raptis
Thanassis
Raptis (Greece) was born in 1962, has
studied the Law and
lives and
works in
Thessaloniki.
For
the last eighteen years has organised ten
photography exhibitions of his own and
also has been
participant of more than eighty
group exhibitions all over the
world.
He
has been responsible for the curating of many photo exhibitions, some
of them in the frame of
Photobiennale, organized by Photography Museum of Thessaloniki.
He
has also organized many photography happenings in the street, with
ecological, political and social content.
Transparancies
from his photos were used as scenery to modern dance performances.
Many
of his writings, translations from Spanish in Greek and photographs
have been published in books, magazines and catalogues. He is writing
articles about contemporary
art in magazines of Thessaloniki.
He
is founding member of Photography Center of Thessaloniki and
participates in its art committee.
Thanassis Raptis
Graduation Dresses
"Clothing
is not seen as simply reflecting given aspects of the self but,
through its particular material propensities, is co-constutive of
facets such as identity, sexuality and social role."
Sophie
Woodward
Graduation
Dresses' is an ongoing project consisting of a series of photographs
I take of young women, in Banja Luka (Bosnia & Herzegovina), who
have completed recently their high school education. All of them have
had a dress made by my mother (for their graduation ball), and nearly
all the dresses are based on an image of a celebrity or a model
wearing a famous designer dress.
I photograph them in their homes
and through this engagement with their personal and intimate spaces
capture that transitional journey from adolescence to womanhood,
revealing both their maturity and vulnerability.
Being
the same age when I left Bosnia as the graduate girls I photograph, I
am drawn to document that point in their lives. The move to Britain
for me happened quite abruptly with a backdrop of the civil war hence
my generation is the only one not to have had the graduation ball.
Perhaps it is this 'loss' that makes me curious as to how these young
women's identities are shaped, and what are their hopes and fears in
the face of the future, which seems so unstable in the current
political and economic climate (but, then isn't the future always
unstable?). All of the graduate girls I have photographed were born
in the late eighties and were children when the civil war started in
what was Yugoslavia. That meant that they grew up during the war and
their adolescent years have been shaped by the equally transitional
and unstable post-war period....”
Margareta
Kern
Margareta
Kern's
practice engages with the social and political sphere through
multi-layered and inter-disciplinary projects. Kern is interested in
the relationship of performance, narrative and participation to
documentary and experimental image making, as well as in the
relationship of art and activism. Using diverse methods and modes of
visual mapping, Kern points to often overlooked yet formative aspects
of everyday life, enabling new perspectives and narratives to emerge.
Informed
by contemporary ethnography, Kern's work to date has engaged with
intimate spaces and narratives, and with questions around visibility,
power and representation.
A
graduate of Goldsmiths College (BA Fine Art, 1998) and University
College London (MA Visual and Material Culture/South East European
Studies, 2010), her work has been shown extensively including
Impressions Gallery , Tate Modern, The Museum of Contemporary Art
Budapest and many others.
Many
books, reviews and articles has been written for her work. She has
earned residencies and awards through out Europe.
Kern
lives and works in London.
Margareta Kern
Clothes
for Death
"Death
cannot wait for the clothes, it's the clothes that should wait for
death." Kaja (Tuzla, Bosnia & Herzegovina), 2006
Clothes
for Death/Odjeca za Smrt
is
a research based visual art project documenting women in Croatia and
Bosnia & Herzegovina who prepare clothes in which they wish to be
buried. The resulting works, photographs and video interviews, deeply
engage with the lives of the women photographed, reflecting on their
complex identites and spaces, shaped by multi-faceted historical,
social and cultural currents*.
"Susan
Sontag describes photography as 'an elegiac art... touched with
pathos.' Kern's photographs have a melancholic air about them, so to
ask how absence is inscribed within Clothes for Death may seem
absurd. It's there of course in the display of carefully selected
clothes worn only in death; the Christian iconography that adorns so
many rooms; the unstinting gaze that pierces each image. But it also
lurks in the very organisation of pictorial space: the sparse
whitewashed walls that corner the diminutive figure of Rosa; the
materiality of their uneven surfaces and small soft shadow cast upon
them; the open wooden chest emptied of burial clothes; and similar
effects across the series - an empty cardboard box; the 'vacant' bed
that Liza faces, as if at a wake; stretches of windowless walls, the
occasional window, blinded with light, like a blank canvas. Yet death
is constantly interrupted by the detail of life, in all its
ordinariness: a blue mug, a bedside light, a carton of juice. Death
and life in uncanny relation." Pennina
Barnett
Margareta Kern
I wonder how I am going to be when I grow old. I want to be a child forever. Will I have the strength to run and to play out in the fields, to visit art galleries? Who forbids me to do both? Art has no boundaries, it can not be enclosed within the limits of a room.
The big love of my life is my grandma. Whenever I 'm with her, we don' t do much thinking. Everything turns into art.
She was born on 1929 in Novorosisk. Her father was a painter, born in Trapezounta.
I inherited my grandfather' s talent and became an artiist. He was painting landscapes on old canvas, scenes from hunting, landscapes of Pontos.
After migrating from Pontos, they arrived at Novorosisk, Russia. They lived there for ten years and arrived in Thessaloniki at the outbrake of world war II.
My grandmother had always dreamt to dress herself as a bride, as when she followed my grandfather they wore rugs. Those were their migration clothes.
The photographer that took their picture, used a photomontage technique on their joint photograph. He cut their heads and pasted them on other bodies.
This way, they seemed as if they had been dressed as bride and groom. But in reality, it was not them. Those were the bodiies of strangers.
Whenever I bumped on these pictures I thought they were funny. I always wanted to comment on them.
One day , I bought a wedding dress from Monastiraki flea market and took it back to the village. She wore it and run to the fields.
We invited her women friends to take pride on her. That day, they remarried in the fields with my grandfather.
This way I managed to make my granmother's dream to be bride come true. It was something she had longed for years.
Marina Provatidou
Marina
Provatidou (Greece) was born on 1978 in Thessaloniki, Greece.
She
studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts - ASFA (2003-8),
painting with Panos Charalambous and Zacharias Arvanitis and
engraving under Vicky Tsalamata.
She
received the Erasmous Scholarship to study at Universitad de
Barcelona, Spain (2005).
Provatidou
has taken part in many group exhibitions in Greece and abroad and has
been awarded for her work
Marina Provatidou
It was Christmas Eve
when my mother returning from her mother's house with a metal box in
her hands, she said me: “The grandmother sends you this box for
your collection". A few months later she died... Since then,
every time I catch her needles in my hands I recall her with
nostalgia.... I
remember the endless hours she was knitting laces, measuring hundreds
of meter and telling us stories from "patrida" as it was
used to call the region in Turkey where her family lived for hundreds
of years....
Longing
for a life not lived, but only heard from her mother and older
brothers to tell when the poverty and hardships, including war, made
them nostalgia the "homeland - patrida", the lands and
houses had been lost, the lose of fortunes and the families where
scattered in the way to new country: Greece.
It's
been more that 4 years since her death and her box, needles and
hooks, constitute an integral part of my artistic creations....
Not
to emulate her (because this is impossible) but to honor her!
To
thank her for all I have learned, on what she had taught me!
Because
deep inside, I am a part of her, and she is a part of my
life....
Because I miss her....
Georgia
Grigoriadou
Georgia Grigoriadou (Greece) was born in 1975.
She graduated Business Administration while studding stained glass and puppets making by pappies masse.
Since 2005 she attends the print making center "HELIOS" on Neapoli, Thessaloniki, Greece.
She had taught stained glass and participate in several group shows and an individual.
She created the puppets-show group "Fourfouri" in Serres and acting for two years.
The last years she is involved in printing, digital art and installations.
She has participate in many group exhibitions such as in Greece, Holland, Bangladesh, Brazil, Denmark, Egypt, Serbia, Colombia, Hungary, Japan, Italy, Ireland, Mexico, Nepal, Panama, Poland, Portugal, Romania, France, Argentina.
Georgia Grigoriadou
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