Views of the installation Elefsina 2010. Photo: Dimitris Kalopodas © Diohandi / Kalfayan Galleries.
The Greek Pavilion - Diohandi
54th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
Diohandi
Beyond Reform
Artist: Diohandi
Curator: Maria Marangou
Assistant Curator: Stavros Kavallaris
Commissioner: The Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism
Preview Days: 1 – 3 June 2011
Open to the Public: 4 June – 27 November 2011
Diohandi is the artist representing Greece in the 54.th International Art Exhibtion – La Biennale di Venezia. The artist will present an extensive installation titled Beyond Reform in the Greek Pavilion, situated in the Giardini.
Taking as her starting point the overall theme of the 54.th International Art Exhibtion – La Biennale di Venezia, namely ILLUMInations, Diohandi will create a site specific installation. This major intervention will explore space and time and will see the pavilion's interior and exterior revised, as an existing space that stands at a given point in time. The byzantine-like façade will be visible through small cracks in the surface of a new outer shell that will cover the original structure, while water light and sound will be dominant elements of the pavilion's interior. Access to the interior will be via an ascending hallway running the length of the Pavilion between a surface of water, leading all the way up to sheer light. Following extensive research into the architecture and history of the Greek Pavilion, Diohandi's new space will see the surrounding environment blend with the interior, proffering new ways in which building fabric, light, sound and water can coexist. Venice's spatial structure and the city's historical features have also played a crucial role in the development of the work.
Diohandi remarks in reference to ILLUMInations: “My research understands the theme in its deepest, most basic sense. Starting with what is a very specific, concrete, strictly rational space, I am intervening to reform the space, one that is different in terms of both structure and emotional charge, where the dialogue between viewer and work/space is at once ambiguous and animated. I am shaping the pavilion's image, both outside and inside: the entire space is remodeled, although none of these interventions will actually affect the existing structure. Sound and light will also feature, which are indispensable to the work.”
Of the artist, curator Maria Marangou comments, “Diohandi is an artist almost exclusively concerned with site specific work, and especially with the relationship between space and time. It is precisely her interest in specific spaces at specific moments in time that leads her to use materials found at the site of each of her works.
In Venice, she carries out an extensive intervention into the basic structure of the Greek pavilion, altering both its exterior and interior. Thus, the pavilion's “byzantine-like” façade will be visible through small cracks opening on the surface of new building materials with which the original structure is to be covered, while water and light are dominant elements of the venue's interior. Access to the interior will be possible through an ascending hallway running the length between a surface of water –as if the canal had flooded into the pavilion– and leading all the way up to sheer light.
The installation at the Greek pavilion in a way reflects the current political state of Europe and of the world at large. It is at the same time, obviously, a comment on the contemporary Greek experience of economic recession and IMF tutelage: a place of light thrown into darkness and decline, holding on, almost willy-nilly it seems, to hopes of spiritual and sociopolitical reconstruction; in other words, to a vision of light that should bring along clarity of mind, as if the ultimate catharsis.”
The artist
Diohandi was born in Athens in 1945. Since 1967, she has presented fourteen (14) solo exhibitions and participated in 119 group exhibitions around the world, as well as in the VII Biennale de Paris and the XII Bienal de São Paulo.
The Commissioner:
The Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism
Οrganisation:
Directorate of Visual Arts – Department of Promotion of Contemporary Art, The Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism
Curator:
Maria Marangou
Assistant Curator:
Stavros Kavallaris
Organisational support:
Maria Panayides
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