The first solo exhibition of Antigoni Pasidi in Greece, entitled “Prop Objects“, is presented by City of Athens, through OPANDA,from 13 December 2024 to 2 February 2025, at the Arts Centre, curated by Christoforos Marinos.
Visual artist Antigoni Pasidi seeks and attempts to convey the constructive honesty of folk architecture in the sculptural installations, photographs and digital collages that she presents at the Athens Municipal Arts Centre.
Pasidi’s research proposal examines the ‘anomalies’ of anonymous architecture, focusing on makeshift and usually ephemeral constructions that deviate from the norm, with the most typical examples being the paddocks and huts of itinerant farmers, and the improvised dwellings in communal communities, such as the one at Riverbed in Andalusia, repeatedly photographed by Ben Murphy. These inventive interventions in the urban and natural landscape prove to be particularly illuminating, as they help us to redefine building in relation to dwelling and thinking.
In the idiosyncratic constructions and objects that we discover by chance while wandering around the city, mainly in the poor suburbs, but also on excursions to the (Greek) countryside or on summer holidays, Pasidi detects – apart from inventiveness – an unpretentious poeticism, a veiled critique of capitalism and a kind of resistance against catholicity. The artist is inspired by the subversive nature of “Adhocism” (to recall the influential manifesto of Charles Jencks and Nathan Silver), which advocates the use of trashy and incongruous materials to create assemblages that apply practical solutions, housing or otherwise, and offer you joy, pleasure and spatial autonomy.
Borrowed from an essay by art theorist Andrea Phillips, the title of the exhibition (“Prop-objects”) refers to support structures, both literal and metaphorical. A representative prop-up is the scaffolding, which captures Pasidi’s interest and occupies a prominent role in the exhibition, both in the installations and in her photographs. Here the scaffolding, famously used in the construction and maintenance of buildings and monuments (it is also found daily in many and varied forms) functions like the frame in a painting, that is, as a “parergon”, according to the philosopher Jacques Derrida. Having studied the performative dimension of sculpture and the stage function of the artwork in her PhD, Pasidi is interested in the emotional effects (affects) generated in viewers by an encounter with a sculptural installation that adopts the anti-memorial characteristics of scaffolding. For the artist, the space of contemporary sculpture is expanded to include “the multimodal art of doing”, the “illicit freedom of practice” (Michel de Certeau), as manifested, among other things, in the unsigned creations of bricoleurs everywhere.
Antigoni Pasidi is a visual artist, assistant professor of Fine Arts and researcher. She studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts, where she graduated in 1999 with a degree in Painting and in 2003 with a degree in Sculpture. She completed her Master’s in Fine Art at Central St Martins College of Art and Design in London in 2003/4 with a scholarship from the Lillian Voudouris Foundation, and received her PhD in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art in London in 2013, with a scholarship from the Foundation for State Scholarships (IKY). Her theoretical research focuses on the elements of spatiality and performativity in contemporary sculpture, which she also examines in her artistic work. Her practice combines different art forms, focusing on sculpture, objects and photography, which she incorporates into installations and performance. She has exhibited in Greece, the UK, Germany, Austria and Switzerland in solo and group exhibitions. From 2016 to 2023 she taught as a Lecturer in Fine Arts on the undergraduate and postgraduate programmes at Arts University Plymouth, UK. She has been teaching in higher education since 2005, and since 2021 has been the External Examiner for the MA Fine Art programme at Birmingham City University.
The exhibition is curated by Christoforos Marinos.
The opening of the exhibition will take place on Friday 13 December at 19:00.
On Saturday 21 December, at 12:00, there will be a guided tour by the artist.
Exhibition Duration: Friday 13 December 2024 – Sunday 2 February 2025
Working Hours: Tuesday- Friday 11:00 – 19:00 Saturday- Sunday 10:00 – 15:00, Mondays closed
The admission is free
Arts Centre City of Athens
Vas. Sofias, Eleftherias Park, Metro: Megaron, the Athens Concert Hall
Information: 210 7232604- 210 7224028
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