History of Absence
Agata Ingarden
Malvina Panagiotidi
Chloé Royer
Curated by Elina Axioti
Organized & produced by ΑΜΑ House
Opening: Saturday, July 9, 2022, 19:00 – 23:00
Exhibition Duration: July 9 – September 11, 2022
Venue: Anargyrios & Korgialenios Foundation, Spetses Island.
Exhibition visiting hours: Daily, 10:00 – 22:00
AMA House is pleased to invite you to the opening of the exhibition History of Absence, on Saturday July 9th, 2022, at Spetses Island.
Following a year-long artist residency program in Greece, AMA House is reclaiming the emblematic building of the formerly all-males boarding school “Anargyrios & Korgialenios Foundation” in Spetses with the exhibition History of Absence, curated by Elina Axioti, and newly commissioned works to Agata Ingarden, Malvina Panagiotidi and Chloé Royer.
Starting from the last year’s issue of AMA house Tactile Ghost, with works by Eva Papamargariti and Marios Stamatis, the History of Absence continues on an investigation of visibility and context, referring again to a certain “fantasmography,” as a way of collecting the uncollectible when the uncollectible can turn to the specter of ghosts. Three speculative installation works present history through re-collections, meaningful options of their reading and attempted distortive perspectives. The works are driven by investigations about local histories attempting an inversion where the ghost-like is reinstated as a present element voiced by feminist practices. Absence becomes evident as the show prioritizes some impossible views. The installations are set as ensembles of sculptural objects, operating on local narratives. Inspired by Iannis Xenakis, who attended the former boarding school as a child, the work of the taxidermist, Dimitris Katsoris, who hunted in the surrounding forest, and the sea creatures. They treat history as an idiosyncratic loss of balance between remains; where narrative emerges as this exact trouble in equilibrium. History is rarely challenging itself enough if it is operated in a visible mode, seeking between visible elements alone; the most important side of history deals with saving the elements that disappeared from it; bringing forward the disappeared can be understood as the driving force of historical creativity. This could be a synonym for forcing absence to become something that it is not. A set of instances, referring to an invisible missing presence, becomes more accurate than absence, crystallizing the local, hidden side of the generic social sphere (while) resisting it in different ways.
Copyright © 2022 AMA House, All rights reserved.
Notes for editors:
AMA House is a cultural program of contemporary art, aiming to create space for artistic research and production through initiatives such as exhibitions, talks, performances, publications and open studios. Operating as a platform that supports an ongoing dialogue between artists and the respective local context that it unfolds, it supports a variety of research practices by enabling artists through a residency program and commissioned productions of works.
Drawing on its nomadic nature, AMA House, founded in 2021 by Anna-Maria Loudarou and Alkis Doussopoulos, encourages synergies and the exchange of ideas between Greek and international artists, promoting the development and exhibition of their work to the Greek islands.
Artists’ Bios:
Agata Ingarden (b. 1994 in Poland) is a graduate of Beaux-Arts de Paris (2018) and Cooper Union School of Art in New York (2016). She works with multiple media and her sculptural practice expands to collaborative works combining video, performance, sound and writing. Her practice is driven by material research as well as investigations in post-humanities, sociology, science fiction and mythical narratives. She has received the Special Prize at the Future Generation Art Prize in 2021. She has held six solo and three, two-person exhibitions internationally at Soft Opening, London (UK), Berthold Pott Gallery, Cologne (DE), Piktogram Gallery, Warsaw (PL), East Contemporary, Milan (IT) with Agniezka Polska, Exo Exo, Paris (FR), with Konstantinos Kyriakopoulos, MX Gallery New York (USA) with Irina Jasnowski Pascual. Her works have been exhibited in group exhibitions globally, and at venues such as Museum unter Tage, Bochum (DE); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (FR); Frac, île-de-France, Paris (FR); Mo.Co, La Panacee, Montpellier (FR); Silesian Museum, Katowice (PL); Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden (DE); Künstlerhaus, Vienna (AT); Kunstfort bij Vijhuizen, Netherlands (NL); Muzeum Sztuki Lodz (PL); and Art Encounters Biennial, Timișoara (RO). She lives and works in Paris, France.
agataingarden.com
Malvina Panagiotidi (Athens, 1985) holds a BA in architecture from the University of Thessaly (GR) and in Fine Arts from the Universität der Künste in Berlin (DE). Her artistic practice focuses on the intersections between occult modernism, the function of the imaginary and uncanny human behaviour found in different sociopolitical contexts. She has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship Program (2018) and the Spyropoulos Foundation Award (2016). She has held solo presentations, while her work has been part of numerous museums and galleries group shows in Europe including: the collaborative exhibition of DESTE Foundation & New Museum in Athens (GR), the Benaki Museum, Athens (GR), Onassis Cultural Center, Athens (GR), Chalet Society, Paris (FR), HKW, Berlin (DE), Signs Fair 2020, Istanbul (TU), AnnexM- Athens Concert Hall (GR), Rodeo Gallery, Piraeus (GR), Kouphonisi Archaeological Collection building (GR). Since 2009 she is a founding member of the artistic research collective Saprophytes. She lives and works in Athens.
Chloé Royer (b. 1989) is a graduate from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris (2015) and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago – SAIC, US. Chloé’s work focuses on the materiality of both bodies and the objects with which bodies interact. Her sculptural work rejects strict demarcations, blurring the boundaries between human, more-than-human entities and objecthood; she produces hybrid shapes that disrupt conventional taxonomies. In 2021 she received the prize of the European public sculpture project Due «FahrArt», Nordrhein-Westfalen (DE), in 2018 she received the prize François de Hatvany prize of Fondation de France for curated for the co-founded the project multidisciplinary Feÿ Arts. Last year she held a solo show at Karl Marx Studio, (FR). Chloé Royer is currently artist in residence at the CN D Centre National de la Danse in Pantin (FR) and from September she will be artist in residence at the Fiminco Fondation in Aubervilliers (FR). She has participated in numerous exhibitions in Europe at notable art venue and museums like, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, (NL), Etage Projects, Copenhague, (DK), New Day Gallery, Berlin (DE), Studio Orta / Galleria Continua, les Moulins, (FR), Galerie 22,48m2, Paris (FR) among others. Her work has been featured at online and printed editions of notable international press like: Vogue Magazine Art online, Numéro Magazine Art online, L’ Officiel Art online, Le Monde online, Figure Figure n°30 online, among others.
Curator’s Bio:
Elina Axioti (Thessaoniki, 1981) lives and works in Athens and Berlin. She was the recipient of the NEON Curatorial Award in 2014. She studied architecture at the University of Thessaly and Humanities and Cultural studies at the London Consortium UCL. Her research work has been supported by NEON and Onassis Foundation. She taught on Culture, Design and New Media at the Aegean University and the University of the Arts Bremen. She was co-founder of the curatorial collective Floater, the design studio Lamb and Lamp and the non-profit cultural initiative Architecture Syndicate. She was the project leader for the Campana brothers’ installations in New Hotel and for the exhibition design commissions of Antonas Office and has collaborated with the Athens Biennial, DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, the Fast Forward Festival 1, the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, Matera, European Capital of Culture 2019 and The Triennale di Milano 2019.
For more inquiries please contact Georgia Liapi at:
[email protected] | +30 6976896808
AMA House would like to thank Gabriella Spano from the Iannis Xenakis Archive and the family of Dimitris Kotsoris.
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