ALEXIA PSARADELI
Mīres
28.09.2023 – 18.11.2023
The exhibition will run until November 18th, 2023.
On Thursday, September 28, from 19:00 to 22:00, the first solo exhibition of Alexia Psaradeli entitled Mīres opens at the Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center.
Artist Alexia Psaradeli, in her first solo exhibiton at Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center, presents a series of works consisting of sculptures, drawings, video and an installation. Her body of work deals with the transformation of femininity into building materials and the concept of female sacrifice as it is displayed from Balkan folklore to contemporary society.
“Alexia Psaradeli’s Mīres recounts timeless stories of the “Fates of Thighs”, paying homage to all the femininities that have been enclosed throughout time, literally or metaphorically. In the Balkan Peninsula, legends passed down from generation to generation speak of women’s sacrifices as necessary to erect a structure. […] In Alexia Psaradeli’s ceramic thighs, organic matter – soil transformed into a malleable form – transfigures into a soft narrative structure complementary to its essence as building material. […] The thighs, as the defining sign of the female body, go from being the foundation to the crowning of an entire edifice, a home.
Mīres also connote the three Fates of ancient Greek mythology (as the word for thigh (miròs) and fate (míra) are close homophones in Greek). […] In the central installation of the exhibition, women’s identities (or fragments thereof) are drawn and ” woven” together – echoing the Fates’ weaving – into a single mesh, a single collective narrative. Empowered, the “Fates of Thighs” invite the exploration of issues, ranging from the politics of gender and sexual desire to bodily memory, resistance, and the formation of collective identities.
Finally, the thighs in Psaradeli’s drawings and sculptures, as fragmented parts of the female body, echo the feminist anthropologist Emily Martin: ‘ it is difficult for women to feel as “whole people” productive and reproductive at the same time, when the current structure of workplaces does not make it easy for any woman to live with her bodily functions ‘[ Martin, Emily, The Woman in the Body, Boston Beacon Press, 1989, 100-101. ], since a woman’ s sense of inclusion can only arise when her biological, social, and political bodies can be in harmony. Until this is realized, Mīres will continue to be transmitters of narratives of the embodied self.”
Excerpt from the text for the exhibition by Art Historian Vicky Tsirou
Translated by Stefanos Gandolfo
1 Martin, Emily, The Woman in the Body, Boston Beacon Press, 1989, 100-101.
