7,36 min
Haris Epaminonda’s work questions the manipulation and the flow of images as well as their power of fascination. The images she works with to create her collages (paper or video) come from magazines or history books, film extracts or soap operas from the 1960s and 1970s. By readapting a universal past (in her work on monuments) as well as personal (with tv series she used to watch as a child, etc.) Haris Epaminonda questions the creation and the assertion of an identity in a particular cultural context and in a currently divided country. Created from extracts of kitsch movies or Greek soap operas from the 1960s, these videos are like audiovisual ‘postcards’ reflecting a nostalgic and melancholic approach. The images have lost their context and original meaning to then be re-assembled, confronted to each other and superimposed with other elements, to reveal new sequences. The narration has disappeared from the sequences and the spectator waits in vain for something to happen. In “Tarahi V”, the saturated colors of the sequences collected from 1960 films seem to give a new life to the characters (the little girl in pink with her doll, the couple walking backwards, etc.) while the fireworks, superimposed throughout the film provide a disenchanting aspect to the whole scene. Recalling Hitchcock as well as René Magritte, “Tarahi V” presents a pending moment providing the shots and the characters with ghostly appearances. This feeling is reinforced by the piano arrangement creating tension throughout the whole sequence. The lighting, the colors and the particular rhythm of Haris Epaminonda’s films provide a strong radiant power. They are like traces of a fictionalized past permanently stuck in one’s memory. Haris Epaminonda’s films and collages belong to a fragmented art that questions the “in between”, a shifting moment leading to a new spatial and time-related sphere.
Epaminonda’s video works are based on re-shot excerpts of film and television footage – principally the Greek soap operas and kitsch romantic films fromthe 1960s that used to fill up Sunday afternoons in the artist’s Cypriot childhood –which she then subtly reworks. Sometimes local celebrities appear in her films, but, in contrast to the early works of Francesco Vezzoli or T.J. Wilcox, they don’t do so in order to emphasize a phantasmal communion with their constructed identities. The scenes that she chooses to work with are not instantly recognizable from the original narrative, so the culled images are effectively stripped of their initial meaning and context. These out-takes are then edited and adapted in a variety of ways: the film’s speed and direction are changed, sections are distorted, its colour is intensified, or a poignant soundtrack is added. Most significantly, she also superimposes footage to make surreal composites: an indoor scene, say, might also have traces of fireworks glimmering through it. While these are all common manipulation techniques of digital video, Epaminonda uses them with captivating sensibility. Extract by Dominic Eichler (Frieze 111). Haris Epaminonda was born in Cyprus in 1980. She lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
"A Land Imagined" and The Ghosts We Forget | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles Photo courtesy of Akanga Film Asia & Philipp Aldrup Photography Photo courtesy of Akanga Film Asia & Philipp Aldrup Photography February 21, 2019 By Alfonse Chiu (1200 words, six-minute read) The three definitions of the word “ghost” from the Oxford dictionary are as follows: the first, “an apparition of a dead person which is believed to appear or become manifest to the living”; the second, “a slight trace or vestige of something”; and the third, “a faint secondary image caused by a fault in an optical system, duplicate signal transmission, etc.” In all three, presence is a suggestion of memory, amenable to corrections by means of a quick scrub of one’s spectacles...
The top ArtsEquator articles of 2019 | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles Photo courtesy of Akanga Film Asia & Philipp Aldrup Photography December 31, 2019 Here’s a list of the top 10 ArtsEquator articles in 2019: Enter Stage Right: Tay Tong by Art sEquator “It is amazing how one’s identity is so associated with one’s job...
In Amapola Prada’s work Movement, we see three spotlit, female bodies lying inert in a darkened room, alongside three dressed, standing figures holding long, wooden spoons...
Americans for the Arts Remembers Star of Film, TV, and Stage, Angela Lansbury | Americans for the Arts Jump to navigation Americans for the Arts Arts Action Fund National Arts Marketing Project pARTnership Movement Animating Democracy Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Instagram YouTube Load Picture Home News Room Americans for the Arts Remembers Star of Film, TV, and Stage, Angela Lansbury Hello Guest | Login Americans for the Arts Remembers Star of Film, TV, and Stage, Angela Lansbury Friday, October 14, 2022 Americans for the Arts mourns the loss of beloved Artists Committee member Dame Angela Lansbury , who passed away in her Los Angeles home on October 11, 2022, at the age of 96...
London’s Tate Modern encouraged visitors to browse through its digitised collection of over 77 thousand artworks, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art produced 360° virtual tours of its spaces and, closer home, the National Museum in New Delhi kept up with its patrons through regular informative posts on Instagram....
Proyecciones Espacio Odeón (Bogotá, Colombia) y Museo La Tertulia (Cali, Colombia) ¿Cómo enfrentamos la incertidumbre de estos tiempos? ¿Puede el juego, los sueños, o incluso las alucinaciones ayudarnos a imaginar otras posibles trayectorias? ¿Qué tipo de prácticas nos permiten relacionarnos con los territorios que habitamos? Tomando como punto de partida el potencial de lo inquietante en medio de una amenaza invisible, Sigo esperando es una serie de proyecciones en las fachadas del Espacio Odeón (Bogotá) y del Museo La Tertulia (Cali)...
Designed as an installation timed spent is determined by the viewer, as with classical sculpture, Anthems is a piece that is in place, and in time, and an important genre of video within the collection...
"Off Stage" at M1 Contact 2018: Communicating Beyond The Stage | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles Image courtesy of M1 Contact Contemporary Dance Festival August 8, 2018 By Bernice Lee (1100 words, six-minute read) M1 Contact Contemporary Dance Festival has become a staple of the contemporary dance scene in Singapore...
That $4 Thrift Shop Painting Finally Does Sell for Big Bucks - The New York Times Arts | That $4 Thrift Shop Painting Finally Does Sell for Big Bucks https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/16/arts/nc-wyeth-sale-thrift-shop.html Share full article Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The saga of the $4 thrift shop painting has a happy ending after all...
Kubra Khademi’s work celebrates the female body and in her detailed drawings and paintings she portrays female bodies floating on white paper...