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Holy Wars
thread, clay, metal, plastic, paper, cotton
"Igitur qui desiderat pacem, præparet bellum"
(Therefore let him who desires peace prepare for war, Publio Flavio Vegecio Renato late 4th century)
The paradox of war for peace stems back to antiquity. Global peace being the utopian idea of cross-boarder harmony and prosperity, with war being a transformative ever evolving institution, whose functionality has been shifting over the centuries and its use to this day is shaping the world according to geopolitical and economical agendas.
Scholars argue that early wars assisted the unification of societies and accelerated the establishment of human rights and international law, to safeguard future generations from the atrocities committed during wartime.
The form of war has also been transmuting in accordance to technological advancements, international economic systems and the global stock market, energy and climate change. Warfare has moved from the individual, to the weapons industry, to economic, cyber and biological means that transcend war from the bloodstained image we have from our history, posing the question if we even know when we are in war and how.
Nowadays, fear-mongering media and state campaigns constantly advocate for imminent threat and the inevitability of war, permitting governments to withdraw funds from the already strained social services to enforce national defence. However, the same governments enable war criminals and support the violation of international law, which was established for the protection of all.
One could ask what poses a greater threat a neighbour with a gun, or a rampant criminal who enjoys law immunity, state and media support?
It is of course the most difficult position to stand between the two, but inactivity and passivity is equal to pretending these two don't exist.
In times like these, maybe remembering that despite how small, we too are threads that help to weave these narratives, yet can affect and shape their design.
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Too many heads in the sand
threads, wood, sand, clay, wire, children’s toys, balloon
“War is biologically possible, but it is not inevitable, as evidenced by its variation in occurrence and nature over time and space … It is scientifically incorrect to say that war is caused by ‘instinct’ or any single motivation. … Modern war involves institutional use of personal characteristics such as obedience, suggestibility and idealism; social skills such as language; and rational considerations such as cost-calculation, planning and information processing...” (Seville Statement on Violence 1986)
In modern days instead of aiming to eliminate war and set human rights as a priority, under the guise of protection of innocents, we formed alliances, signed treaties and founded world organizations as watchdogs for the vulnerable.
But what is the point of all our efforts, when the same nations that guaranty the protection of human rights feed the war machine and weaponize war criminals via the arms industry and the avoidance of international law enforcement, in the name of profit and power?
How can we feel secure while turning a blind eye to deliberate violence against unarmed populations, humanitarian crises, exploitation, abuse, and oppression—falsely believing in a justice system rooted in discrimination, complacent in the idea that it will always be 'them' and never 'me'?
Can anyone truly feel safe in a world where human life is commodified and its worth is ranked by different types of hierarchy?
In an era of unprecedented technological advancement, where a machine can now do the thinking for us, we as humans are losing the main component that defines our humanity, empathy.
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Quicksand – the sustainability paradox
threads, led lights, paper, plastic, string, acrylic paint
“The exquisite dilemma of quicksand is that you must escape as quickly as possible but anything you do to escape only drags you further down. Our ecological crisis is a quicksand problem, but our disconnected economic system conceals the fact.”
Duncan Austin, environmental economist & sustainable investor, 2020
We live in a state of alert! The Doomsday clock is now seconds away from the apocalypse and governments and governing bodies are trying in a frenzy to stop time.
Sustainability is one of the most trending subjects today and new laws, policies and processes are taking place to tackle emissions, pollution and the overheating of the planet.
However, more and more scientists are flagging up a paradox. While we are trying to transform our world to become more eco-friendly and sustainable, are we actually causing more harm in the process?
There are many examples and they are to say the least, terrifying if accurate.
Examining closer the production of green energy there is an urgent question that needs a prompt answer, is the way we harvest and store this energy sustainable?
Obtaining the rare minerals for creating energy storing batteries is believed to lead to over-mining, which threatens sensitive ecosystems. There are also concerns with the exponential extension of land needed for wind and solar farms in order to meet consumer needs leading to more natural areas turning into concrete fields. Not all the materials required to create the tools for harvesting green energy, such as solar panels and blades of wind turbines are sustainable and therefore their sourcing and production is yet to be considered green.
Other concerns are raised for example with the electric cars, which undoubtedly cut down their CO2 emission, yet in some countries the electricity needed to power them comes from coal-run industries.
Other daily products have also fallen under scrutiny such as reusable bags or straws, where there are claims that the environmental impact the production of one has, equals to 100 times their equivalent in plastic. Not to mention paper alternatives and deforestation, etc, as well as the higher cost of eco-friendly products to their non eco-friendly equivalents in day-to-day life, where environmental consciousness becomes a matter for higher paid individuals and not possible for those on a low income.
So while we are told and led to believe that viable solutions have been found, and now marching towards a better and more ecologically balanced future whilst maintaining the same lifestyle, one can’t help but think if while we are in this adjustment stage we might be running out of time?
Does a more sustainable future require not only alternatives to replace and maintain our present consumerism economy, but radical changes in our mind-sets and how we perceive the environment and live our lives?
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Invocation the next step
In collaboration with Joe Furlong (drawing on sculpture) and Zuza Tehanu (musician)
fabric, acrylic paint, a musician and a cello
Similar to our global habits of exploration, knowing more about the outer space than our own oceans, as individuals tend to place more faith in social environments and spiritual cosmo-theories instead of our own internal universe.
While striving to achieve a harmonious existence, we invest our efforts in social alignment, accumulating accomplishments and success, influential relationships, social approval and spiritual adherence, however, do we apply the same efforts inwards?
How much of our social success is reflected in our relationship with ourselves?
This work contemplates our own divinity, expressed in self-worth and uniqueness by embracing one’s inner "daemons", unseen internal forces mediating our fears and desires.
To reach the harmony of our own existence one must attune to the dissonance within.
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False hope
clay, fabric, thread and balloons
Our merits are counted in tokens as our modern evolution favours quantity. The more you own increases your survival rate, desirability and status in our societies. The exchange of time for hard work, obedience and consumption describes the exemplary citizen. Our ethical currency is dictated by our ambition to surpass the average citizen, by defalt attain power over them and claim the status we were promised for our exchange. In this achievement lies our happiness and fulfillment.
We are marching towards our hopes and dreams with this transactional investment of time. This transaction ensures that the more personal hours we exchange in a daily basis, the more future tokens of time we will receive when we will reach the status were we are fullfilled and happy in life. There is only one question, is it the individual who dictates when that point will come? What are the criteria of fulfillment and happiness and by whom they were really set?
In this race for survival of the wealthiest, moral codes, ethics, laws and empathy become hurdles, that could deprive us of our promised happiness. Shining examples parade our screens on a 24/7 display. These affirm our trust in the system, cementing our longing and forming our children’s understanding of the world, preparing them to fulfill their role of the exemplary citizen; indoctrinated cogs in a well oiled machine.
In a time where individualism thrives, public opinion and recognition are shaping the race track we will spend our lives running on. Belonging has changed to competition, but is the prize worth the sacrifice?
Nietzsche once discussed that hope can act, or maybe even used, as a form of enslavement by prolonging human suffering.
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Escape
cardboard, masking tape, branch, woodcut, oxidising agent and threads
In the ancient Greek myth of the three fates, the thread of life is spun, measured and cut for each person.
“One thread simply exists in isolation, yet many threads together create clusters and form societies.”
Throughout our history and from these clusters, empires have risen and fallen, having a recurrent pattern among them: the endless ego-driven accumulation of power. The "I" has played pivotal role in building and shaping our world, yet it is also implicated in its destruction.
The perceived god-like power of reshaping our human and natural environments to fit one’s utopia is now costing us our humanity.
I am searching within this vicious circle for a way out. A regeneration, a breath of new life where we together create our future, yet without losing sight of who we are.
New life arising from the ruins of old ideals. Nature adorned with handwritten names - identities of you and I - reminding us that who we are is an integral component in the attempt to reshape the future, not for the one but for both nature and humans alike.
For this work, members of the community of Aldeia de Aviz were asked to unravel, measure and cut a thread and handwrite their names on a piece of paper. The named threads were used to construct a collective representation of collaboration towards a more symbiotic future.
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No connection
found telephone cables, dead bark, fabric, thread
Human ingenuity has prolonged or survival as species. The ability to alter and utilise nature around us to persevere, grow and expand has always been our driving force. The circle of appropriation, use, discard, and then reclaimed by nature has been activated since human appearance on the planet. But what is the cost and how permanent are the effects of this terraforming, one should wonder.
We work the nature but do we connect with it through our inventions and progress? And what is the significance of connecting with nature in the first place?
One of our highest achievement is a majestic network that crosses borders and brings the world closer. Time and distance have no relevance now, we exist in a universal transmission unlimited to its capabilities. Resembling the Mycorrhizal network of the plants we use our networks to exchange information, news, beliefs, theories and threats.
But with a significant difference. The Mycorrhizal network’s purpose is to promote the well-being and survival of all organisms attached to it, through this exchange of information. It is a network of connectivity for different species to cohabit and benefit from this cohabitation.
Does our own network aim the same or it has become a tool of polarisation, division and isolation?
With questionable intentions we load this network with information that serves the singular rather than the whole, trying to create independent clusters within the same environment and while the sole idea of a network is to connect we use it to divide and disseminate our cohabitation. We pride ourselves on our interconnection yet we lack the human interaction. There is a firm determination to create our own new environments but at its core we lack the knowledge, we ignore existing successful models and use tools and foundations that serve only the individual.
It might look like a flower but it feels and smells like plastic.
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Tight embrace
found wood, thread
Do we embrace or we suffocate one. Is it dependency or appropriation?
How do we forge relationships with one another, with our environments and with nature? Is there space for we in the I; because we were born with the I, educated with it and were asked to preserve it with all costs, expand it and establish it. Therefore is in our human nature.
Lives, threads, colorfully spreading, being measured and cut, for each one differently, but we are intertwined in a network of perpetual crossings and embroils. We exist and expand like a single organism and we create over other creations.
So many hands are holding on this branch, it has become invisible. We have almost forgotten is there. We think we created something new, something unique and indestructible. Even when parts of it are flaking and its core rotting away, we put our children to sleep.
Time seems irrelevant and the future yet too far.
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“Where I stand”
thread, acrylic, plastic, fabric, marker
How do human beings negotiate the spaces in which they live, work, and play?
“Spatial Behavior: A Geographic Perspective” by Golledge, Reginald G & Stimson, Robert J.
Negotiation and exchange of space, in both its physical or abstract notion is inextricably bound with the human existence. Humans and space share a constructive yet destructive relationship, in a state of constant flux; from monumental alterations of the natural space we inhabit and any consequences that might have, to daily mundane movements that result to micro-modification of the space we occupy within our natural environment and social geographies.
While we give meaning, change, adjust and reinvent space, it simultaneously defines our behaviour, identity, decision making and relations. However, what do we perceive as space? To quote G. W. Leibniz (polymath / scientist 15 th – 16 th century)
“I observe, that the traces of moveable bodies, which they leave sometimes upon the immoveable ones on which they are moved; have given men occasion to form in their imagination such an idea, as if some trace did still remain, even when there is nothing unmoved. But this is a mere ideal thing, and imports only, that if there was any unmoved thing there, the trace might be marked out upon it. And ’tis this analogy, which makes men fancy places, traces and spaces; though those things consist only in the truth of relations, and not at all in any absolute reality”. The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, V, p. 47
Within this “relationalism” between space and the notion of space, our emplacement inside it is ultimately fluid and spatial permanence becomes ostensible. This installation work attempts to capture the transience of this exchange between the space and the non-space us humans create, mark, claim and negotiate.
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“Utopia”
thread, found objects, door viewer
From the Heights of Despair, philosopher Cioran sees utopia as a monstrous fantasy; an ouroboros eating its tale. It is the achievement of happiness that creates an oxymoron with that of human nature. If utopia is the final stop of mankind’s journey, will the human condition be satisfied with its stillness when we reach it?
And yet we haven’t even looked at the notion of utopia “the eternal happiness” under a magnifying glass. For as utopia is the state of being amongst the perfect environment, given that to be social, ecological, spiritual and so forth; where happiness on the other hand it’s by far an individual and individualistic quest and for many, the means of achieving as such are blessed by the cause.
The sole fact that throughout our lives we are presented with more than one utopias, including our own version of it, alarmingly indicates its subversive and mischieving nature. At our core, most people believe we know how a better world would look like. Isn’t that scary and whimsical? for the simple reason of how many of us would be willing to compromise our own utopia to accommodate for others and share a vision…and let’s not even start about authorship in that eventuality.
One would argue that the finest utopia of them all would be based on ethics, respect and peaceful consistence, unwarranted of laws or rules, aka anarchism in its core. What a beautiful vision that would have been if not for all its three components to be fundamentally idiosyncratic, empirical and given the power authoritarian.
That subsequently leads to one’s utopia being another’s dystopia.
As George Orwell puts it: “Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has a toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having a toothache…Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness”
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“Femininity and the one eyed monster”
thread, a plastic eye and my grandmother’s cross stitching
What is femininity? Is it a concept, a biological variable, a social contract? Is it gender defined? Or could be simply a term plausible enough to grand power and control to anything that it labels?
The multifaceted character of femininity has fluctuated from a tool of oppression and discrimination to a tool of empowerment, forming personal and cultural identity.
My grandmother's delicate cross-stitching, amongst other feminine trades, was an indication of domestic skills, measure of worth and marriage suitability, examined and evaluated by the mother in law.
Nowadays, especially in the western world, such concepts are almost obsolete; however, deeper narratives used to appropriate behaviours and thus control them, mainly stemming from cultural and religious beliefs, not only remained but morphed into our contemporary norms.
"it is the time of the month" / "the reds have landed" / "red alert" are some of the code names, even used between women to describe the biological marker of female life that through time and cultures was perceived and defined from sacred to shameful.
This work refuses that silence.
Feminity has been assigned, rebranded, monetised, while punished as sin. Sin has outlasted singular religions or political systems, and has been used as a moral tool, in cases more powerful than the law itself, to control and divide.
Indoctrination of the sin narrative has resulted in the judgement of it often being internalised and reapplied.
The gaze that judges in not always external.
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“...and with the marks on my hands I will tell you my story...”
thread, fabric and clay
Local traditions mark our identity as nations; folklore and rituals are carried in time, from tribe to tribe, from family to family, from person to person. Preserved to mark our passage through history, and have been challenged in time of conflict and through occupations, in order to dissolve national unity and strength.
In contemporary society, in our daily lives, little room is left to practice our ancestral customs, but traditions and rituals have become part of our museum attractions. Does conservation of the ‘Old Ways’ reflects their significance in our identity? Do we share the same identity with our ancestors or is the past just a mark of our existence in the passage of time?
Hajichi, a significant but now fading tradition of tattooing on the hands and arms of Okinawan women, recorded from the early years of the Ryukyu kingdom and officially banned in 1899 during the Meji era, is the subject of discussion for this exhibition.
Born in Greece and now based in London, the artist/curator Froso Papadimitriou has taken an interest in exploring this tradition through her work, raising questions about identity, the preservation of histories and personal reflections on belonging. Marking the body, is a practice which has manifested in different continents from the early years of human existence but for the artist the Hajichi tradition poses a special interest not only due to its intriguing meaning, technique and beauty; but also due to the political and social affiliations this tradition bares.
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“Counting Moments”
carpentry by Manos Lantzanakis
thread, wood
Our social structures, the community clusters we belong to, the safety nets we have created around us, all have now been tested against the uncertainty of our own existence. During this world pandemic, what has been highlighted is how ephemeral our life is within the cosmos. As a defence mechanism many of us retracted to living in the moment, one day at a time, in order to cope with the severity of the situation, the violent change of our lives and the ambiguity of our future.
The world has paused indefinitely and maybe for the first time we are left with ourselves, to learn to coexist with who we are and accept how insignificant our existence is to nature and yet so significant to the people around us.
It is more prominent now than ever to cherish the moments and find the real values in our lives, as all can cease in a heartbeat.
This work aims to highlight a great finding amidst this time of terror and distress. Time is elusive and while time is eternal, we are so temporary. The treads of our lives have woven beautiful social fabrics yet so fragile and unable to detain time.
The precious moments we live are scatter like the sand grains in the wind, ever changing, always shifting and reform, one as unique as the other. These are the components of our conscious existence, which we should learn to treasure and emerge full-heartly in them as “tomorrow comes today”. (Gorillaz)
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“The elegy of the lost I”
thread, ink, fabric, oil paint, wood
The sexually frustrated gender, an androgynous vilified hero, a hysteric housewife, a sold soul, a tempered mind, the suppressed coward, the enslaved by desires, the escapist
And a crucifixion.
What we can all be, we still condemn.
‘The elegy of the lost I’ is a testimony to the martyrdom of the very need of belonging and assimilating to a social and norm-abiding identity. Whilst our post-modern way of living within a rapidly growing array of information and platforms of expression increasingly uncovers the complexity of identity and supports its multitude, we still cling on the classifications of the past to draw sense in our current socio-political realities.
As some pushing forwards towards a more liberal and equal social behaviours, other regress to archetypal social models which have lost their relevance to the contemporary realities and fortify themselves with them, to protect what they perceive as normality.
This regression is what maintains to the day social classifications and empowers social environments to define who we are and we should not be. A ‘framed’ crucifixion, the box one must fit in, the cross of taboo, is what many of us experience is silence.
This work is the testimony not for the ones who have found their voices but for the ones who still fight to belong.
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“Slow the much oil”
thread, fabric, ink and pigments on recycled canvas and found bicycle wheel
This work is aiming to raise questions on the relevance of values and beliefs we have inherited from our past and how they manifest in our contemporary society.
Slow the much oil… is a playful contradictory work which borrows the silhouette of a chandelier, an imposing object of wealth and luxury, and recreates it with found objects and recycled materials.
The making of a chandelier requires valuable materials composed with skill, and elegance, in order to transform it to a symbol of beauty and prosperity. Its use since the medieval times, due to the high cost of manufacturing, was to illuminate wealthy house holds, palaces and temples and was associated with social status and economical power. Since the 20th century, the chandelier from a functional object used for illuminating large spaces has become a decorative item and symbol of luxury and is rarely used as an interior light.
This artwork, resembling a chandelier, is made by garbage found on the street and other materials which were indented to be dispose off; instead these materials are modified to compose an object which is presented as valuable piece of art.
Far from its initial function, this object has no lighting or light reflecting function at all, which makes it a non usable simply decorative object. In addition, challenging and grotesque imagery, inspired by the latest incidents and socio-political and economical issues, decorates its exterior.
This work is aiming to challenge the value and symbolism we give to certain objects and questions the ways we measure this value and is intended to become a reminder of the urgency to review our values systems and ethical priorities.
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“Home Sweet Home”
thread, pillow, needles, boarding passes
Thread and pillow, metaphors for life and comfort.
Moving away for home, immigration; for some a choice, a dream to follow and for others a vital need for survival, an escape.
A good night sleep comes when one is at ease and secure, an Asylum Seeker once told me. He recounted that he didn’t use a pillow to sleep for several months even after entering the UK, until the point he finally felt safe to allow him self to submerge in to slumber. This was a side effect of the situation he fled from, where falling in deep sleep and not be fast to react and escape, could have been lethal for him and his family.
‘Home Sweet Home’ represents the hostile environments that people encounter in their homelands and are forced to flee in separate paths, away from the comfort, warmth and security of their homes and loved ones.