Dafni Barbageorgopoulou and Anthea Behm
Penelope Unbound
1st - 29 November 2018
Daily Lazy Projects
Sina 6 & Vissarionos 9 (entrance)
Athens 10680, Greece
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Dafni Barbagergorgopoulou, Barbary Feng, 2018, polystyrene foam, aluminum reliefs, soap bars, 220 x 160 x 70 cm |
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Dafni Barbageorgopoulou, Fig Shui, 2018, polystyrene foam, aluminum reliefs, 190 x 80 x 55 cm |
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Barbary Feng, 2018 (detail), polystyrene foam, aluminum reliefs, soap bars, 220 x 160 x 70 cm |
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Barbary Feng, 2018 (detail), polystyrene foam, aluminum reliefs, soap bars, 220 x 160 x 70 cm |
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Barbary Feng, 2018 (detail), polystyrene foam, aluminum reliefs, soap bars, 220 x 160 x 70 cm |
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Barbary Feng, 2018 (detail), polystyrene foam, aluminum reliefs, soap bars, 220 x 160 x 70 cm |
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Barbary Feng, 2018 (detail), polystyrene foam, aluminum reliefs, soap bars, 220 x 160 x 70 cm |
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Barbary Feng, 2018 (detail), polystyrene foam, aluminum reliefs, soap bars, 220 x 160 x 70 cm |
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Barbary Feng, 2018 (detail), polystyrene foam, aluminum reliefs, soap bars, 220 x 160 x 70 cm |
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Installation view |
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Installation view |
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Installation view |
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Anthea Behm, #6 from DUST series, silver gelatin black & white photogram and photograph, 10 x 8'', 2018
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Anthea Behm, #8 from DUST series, silver gelatin black & white photogram and photograph, 10 x 8'', 2018
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Anthea Behm, #4 from DUST series, silver gelatin black & white photogram and photograph, 10 x 8'', 2018
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Anthea Behm, #1 from DUST series, silver gelatin black & white photogram and photograph, 10 x 8'', 2018
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Anthea Behm, #7 from DUST series, silver gelatin black & white photogram and photograph, 10 x 8'', 2018 |
Dafni Barbageorgopoulou and Anthea Behm
work in sculpture and photography, respectively. This show brings
together their recent work in these media. Barbageorgopoulou presents
several sculptural works that depict an intertwining of elements from
nature and the human body in an unbound, dreamlike condition. Behm
presents a series of photograms that combine fragmented designs with
appropriated photographic images of female nudes. Working through
questions of dissolution, healing, and recovery, these two female
artists navigate the visual history and political present of how we
represent and imagine the humans and other living beings with whom we
share this planet.
Barbageorgopoulou’s
sculptural works Barbary
Feng and
Fig
Shui
depict three Barbary figs (spineless cactuses), which are carved out
of polystyrene. They include reduced-size human body parts, which are
made of aluminum and pinned at different spots on the sculptures. The
parts are cutouts from ritual tamata
that
were
kindly donated from the Marian Shrine of Tinos Island specially for
this project. The works operate across two related axes. First, there
is the human body and its growth as represented by the organic form
and formalism of the sculptures. Second, there is the
imaginative undoing and remaking of that growth as seen in the
relationship between shamanism and religion through the logic of
protection. Here the cactus plant is a symbol of the visionary and
illusionary, especially as accessed through the shamanic trip. The
deconstruction of the human recalls the dream-like experience in the
process of becoming a shaman. This undoing, while it can be
painful, is part of the process of growth and transformation in both
the sculptural and psychic imagination. Rather than viewing shamanism
as an archaic form overcome by organized religion, these sculptures
depict their intertwining and mutual dependency. Thus the body
elements, taken from the tamata,
refer to the notion of prayer for which the metal plaques are offered
in the Greek orthodox tradition.
Anthea
Behm’s photograms depict female figures appropriated from the work
of Man Ray. They interact on a single plane of silver gelatin
photographic paper with shapes derived
from the work of Moholy-Nagy. They are made by
using a set of unique processes that combine conventional, pictorial
photography (made from negatives) with concrete processes. The images
are made on black and white paper in the darkroom, with the color
generated by harnessing what is conventionally thought of as an
“error” in the darkroom process. By combining these two
images on a single plane, Behm brings forth the historical
(patriarchal) impulse to turn the female figure into an object for
formal investigation. Reactivating this history, she shows how this
impulse is one that persists today and continues to inform our vision
and social systems. But the images do not simply reproduce the
female subject as object of formal fascination. Fragmenting the male
gaze through the patterns, they show the gaps in the historical
record in which these women’s lives found their own meaning and
logic beyond the structures that sought to contain them.
Bringing
the works together, we begin to see the complex ways in which our
visual histories are saturated with ideas about bodies, forms, and
fragments that can work to both oppress and liberate.
Barbageorgopoulou and Behm push us to both see and live differently,
and to understand the need of rupturing present forms. But they do so
with great care, suggesting that what matters is not change as such,
but a conscientious movement to new forms of embodied life and
planetary cohabitation. In the classic myth of Odysseus,
Penelope puts off her suitors by secretly unweaving a shawl that she
says must be completed before she chooses a new husband. In the work
of these two artists, Penelope does not weave by day and unweave in
the night. She is unbound to the very demand of having to rely on
such subterfuge. No one has freed her. She has made herself free.
* All photos by Athanasios Gatos