With color I transform the construction into a different structure. It is a practice which I apply in my work. The colors are those of springtime when the green has a radiance of the new-born. That’s why I could say that this box is the beginning of life, but it could be also the end. For me this is a profound meaning of Pandora’s box.
Category: Greece
The Wells of the Virgins
The mysteries of Eleusis, is the theme I have been working on since 1992. It is about a long research I have been doing on forgotten rites and their symbolism. An endeavor based on the writings of ancients and also of contemporaries on Greek art. The fertility of the earth-womb and children’s tomb symbolized by the well, which encloses the water of life, the water that purifies, but also fecunds, is inseparable from the earth. The archetypal image of the mother/daughter, Demeter and Persephone as identical characters. As well as Persephone’s ravishment by Hades, refers to the sexual act and to marriage. Finally, its descent and raising represent death and resurrection. Always assumed, the unknown rites have to be imagined…
Pandora’s Bomb
Untitled
Pandora’s Box
Map-Labyrinth
I opened the box’s door, I took off its top and I glued it to the bottom part to be a pedestal. Then I painted the whole box in white and sealed it, following its shape with pieces of Plexiglas, on which appear (through the method of décollage that I have been using since 1974) fragmented images which constitute my labyrinths. By this symbolic gesture of encasement and transparency, I hide away forever and protect the most precious feeling that remains buried at the bottom of this box since the time of Pandora; Hope.
Gaia
I put earth into Pandora’s box, enclosing meaninglessness within. The box, decorated with various symbols and colors signify the contents. The edges and corners are softened.
The enclosure of earth becomes an oxymoron. A small portion inside stands for the universal. The box is a prayer to the larger form from which it was taken.
The pins refer to the sensitivity of a living body that will feel pain by being injured, but will also start to blossom. The GROUND/ SOIL/ EARTH as READY MADE, an allegory of GAIA (earth), the UNIVERSAL MOTHER AND LAST HOPE.
The Last Child
My work is a continuous relation with movement and time. The spiral is a symbol of life and fertility: the permanence of being under its mobility.
Knitting Machine for a Woolen Cord
My work is full of allusions to the ‘female’ element, mythology and cordicraft. Wool thread is the main material in my ‘knitted sculptures.’ The box contains a small knitting machine and a small bobbin of wool thread. This is a traditional way of making a cord, and anyone can continue the process of knitting. It is like a trip, a memory, but the tip of the thread must remain in the box.
Bridge Between
I have been working with the image of the moon for the past two years, which on many levels has associations with women and the universal.
As my work is largely abstract, incorporating the specificity of the form and object of “the box” was a challenge. The association with Pandora’s box set my mind back to the beginning of humanity, the myth of creation, the fall of man, loss of innocence, knowledge, and in particular, how woman is perceived. I began wanting to turn the box into a bridge, using it as a metaphor for women’s ability to access a more open-oriented position (meaning). A bridge gives access between two lands, worlds, positions; over what seems impassable.
The material and color of the box dictated the other components of the work. (There is a fleshiness to cedar and clay.) The two ceramic circles which I used, connect the bridge, continuing and expanding the human sensation into abstraction. The work relates to lack and possibility, of balance.
The Myth of the Spider
For years now, being taught by the spider, I weave webs. Small ones and large ones using all kinds of materials. To me it is an infinite source of spiritual codes. I chose the ancient myth of Goddess Athena and the Spider. From the little box arises what has been marking us for centuries, the challenge of becoming Gods.
Two women comprise the myth…Goddess Athena, holder of wisdom, protectress and teacher of the weaving art and the Spider, mortal, outstanding weaver, daughter of Idmon the colorist, mother of Clostiras. Spider challenges Athena to a weaving contest. She creates a beautiful, flawless tapestry. This image insinuates the desire of mortals to reach the divine qualities of the gods to desire to live up to their level.
Athena infuriated by this, punishes the spider sentencing her to live from then on and forever hanging from a thread, transformed into an insect. Being an insect now, the spider weaves its beautiful webs till this day, still creating.
Art contains arrogance.
Art challenges the gods.
Art creates little gods.
Amazons of the Next Millennium
As the title suggests, my box is a symbol of the Amazons, female warriors, who lived and fought together in a migratory way of life during the golden age. My box is filled with a series of women’s names (two hundred) of all nationalities from antiquity to the present, printed in capital letters, in different colors on white paper tags. Each of the names brings into mind images of a woman we know, we read, we are, or we want to be.
This open box filled with names, which come out from all four sides, becomes almost invisible and signifies the power, the strength, the importance, the influence and the voice we women could achieve working together, for our rights against violence and discrimination at the beginning of the next millennium.
Box-Bird and Branch
The cosmos of my work is in a forest. Flights of birds grow on silent trees and huge seeds take different positions. The leaf is the poetic unit which allows the magic passage from the world of plants to the one of animals and from there to the geophysical world.
When I begin my work, I spend a lot of time minutely observing the physical world. Then this state of vigilance is changed through a more distant positioning in which the object I observe is the parallel motion of my creative process to that of nature.
Is there an ecology of conceptual and creative phenomena? I often tend to incorporate ecological concerns by contrasting elements (birds on trees without foliage, seeds with burning interiors) to suggest the interplay of human interventions on natural processes.