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micaramel · 5 years ago

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Artist: Thanasis Totsikas

Venue: Akwa Ibom, Athens

Exhibition Title: The Crucifixion of Thanasis Totsikas

Date: June 15, 2020 – July 10, 2020 and September 10, 2020 – October 10, 2020

Curated By: Maya Tounta

Click here to view slideshow

Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.

Images:

Images courtesy of Akwa Ibom, Athens

Press Release:

In 1985 Thanasis painted a depiction of life’s ladder and titled it The stairway of life. In 1988 he made a sculpture in metal with the same title. I found these in the digital archive of his work a few days ago and called him up to ask about them, but he appeared pretty unenthusiastic, so I let it go. This morning as I sat down to write this text – I had a whole outline for it – it wouldn’t come out. I went back to looking at the 80s ladders. We haven’t reproduced them for you here, but just imagine, these are full of dynamism, strength and forward hope. Now it is more than two decades later, and Thanasis has repainted the ladders in a series of drawings he’s now charged with a very different emotion. In the recent works, a Sisyphus-like figure appears carrying a boulder, bent-over, tired, as if about to collapse on the floor. Thanasis has replaced hope with exhaustion, strength and dynamism with unelected perseverance. The transition leaves one with that feeling of never knowing if you’re well or not, though admittedly you remember, at some point, knowing.

Coming to this thought, I remembered something else I came across in the digital archive – a scan of the backside of a postcard on which Thanasis had scribbled something. I couldn’t totally make out what it said so I sent it to him on Messenger, and he wrote back:

“This is what I’ve written”, he said. “I slowly forget all about life’s ladder…we have sour cherry juice here…it seems like my taste comes from my mother’s side of the family”. “This postcard is from a drawing. I must have forgotten about it. I used to send things like that to the house. Sometimes I’d write in the back. This one reminds me of a (Yannoulis) Chalepas drawing.”

If Thanasis hadn’t painted his Crucifixion, I’d never see those images. I kept thinking about that. That they’re real – autobiographical, as he says, but not necessary. There’s an enormity of feeling that comes with that simple realisation, and it’s hard to know how to speak about it when it concerns another person, someone you don’t know, except for a few conversations and the work of course. The work is the testimony. Then there’s the realisation that you’ll never fully access what lies behind it.

In the exhibition, we are showing 200 or so drawings Thanasis has made in the last couple of years. Most of them depict his Crucifixion, he raised on the cross, being taken down and placed in his mother’s arms. I find it hard to look at them. It’s not so much the violence and the suffering that I find difficult but the sheer quantity of them—the relentless repetition of the pain he gave time to sediment. I also fear people might look past these drawings and pass judgment on Thanasis personally for the amount of suffering to which, he has laid claim. I have a feeling Thanasis might have crucified himself to fulfil an advance sentence he’d come to expect from the outside.

In these last few weeks of self-isolation, I looked at the histories of the Crucifixion as Christian Passion, Roman punishment and subject in art and certain things resonated with the work.

The punishment of the Crucifixion Romans would mainly impose on deserters, murderers, traitors and criminals of humble origin. Depending on their social status, Romans used to place convicts at different heights on the pillar of the cross. The higher their situation, the higher they hung. That was both symbolic like in their annual dog crucifying ceremonies, and practical. A way to ensure that different bodies would end up in the stomachs of different animals. It was typical for bodies not taken down quickly to end up as food for vultures while dogs and other wild animals would feed on the legs of those that hung closer to the ground. Also, death by Crucifixion was often slow and rarely solitary. There are accounts of people speaking to each other on the cross for hours, laughing, spitting at spectators, even singing songs in protest. I can see this irreverence in Thanasis’ drawings as well. When I asked him about why he’s painted his Crucifixion, Thanasis said he had turned aggression he once felt for others inwardly towards himself. In an older interview with Kostas Bitopoulos about an exhibition at Epikentro Gallery in Patra, Thanasis had said then: “I didn’t do it to exalt it. I did it so I could rid myself from it.”

In Christianity, the cross is a handle that God’s frail and light body uses to lift the world. According to the philosopher, mystic and political activist Simone Weil, the cross – one’s personal cross, is a needle that pierces the quivering soul that is like scales out of balance to give it stability. The act of piercing, the suffering, the cross, is what allows each of us individually to realise that we are not the centre of the world. It is the breakdown of our sense of self-importance, of our ego, through the painful but necessary realisation that we’re bound to a force of gravity matched only by grace. For Weil, the original question that supposedly remained unanswered – “Why have you forsaken me?” – was responded in silence. For others, it’s never received a response. Thinking about the Armenian women that were nailed alive upon the cross, the words of Scottish painter Craigie Aitchison come to mind. Aitchison, who must have painted thousands of crucifixion scenes during his life, and who never professed to be particularly religious either, when asked about his enduring interest in the subject had said that he considered: “the Crucifixion the most horrific story he’d ever heard and little more; the ganging up against one person; as long as the world exists one should attempt to recall it.” Aitchison was by all accounts, a charming man who lived his life among animals he loved dearly. For some time, he had canaries living in his studio. They’d made their nest inside an old mattress. Once, the police caught him driving with his Bedlington terrier on his shoulder.

Thinking about a sequence of crucifixions across art history almost exclusively painted by men, I realised that seeing myself as a woman I’d never identified with the figure of Christ. I wondered if other female or female-identifying artists had been able to look past such markers of difference in identity and create representations of him in their way.

The first work that came to my mind was a photograph by American photographer Francesca Woodman, Untitled in which Woodman places the Crucifixion inside her home picturing herself as Christ hanging above the door. As Deborah Garcia says about this work, this unusual depiction of the Crucifixion which has a mise-en-scene quality is characterised by a mundane hierophany that is seldom found in common depictions of the Passion. In the 1977 self-portrait On Being an Angel #1, Woodman has placed the camera above her head producing a distorted image where her lower body disappears. The unusual angle Woodman has used to picture herself in this work reminded me of another depiction of the Crucifixion by artist Salvador Dali, Christ of St John of the Cross, 1951. To create this image, Dali employed Hollywood stuntman Russell Saunders to pose for him suspended from an overhead gantry so that he could study the effect of gravity on his body. Woodman’s photograph reminded me of Dali’s painting because of how they both position the viewer in space but seeing both works alongside each other made me aware of a fundamental difference between them. In January of 1981 Woodman’s body was found in a New York morgue as that of an unidentified young woman. According to witnesses, she had fallen off a building that same morning, and the fall had disfigured her face. Woodman struggled with depression for years. That struggle is visible in her photographs permeated by a thick atmosphere of melancholy, albeit her use of motifs and interpretation of symbols such as that of the Crucifixion is singular like pain is singular and at the same time novel. That embodied experience with the affective reach that it has is not present in Dali’s work which is characterised by a formal intention – a stylistic, distanced contouring of the subject.

Woodman’s intimate and embodied approach to showing suffering brings to mind not only the words of Aitchison and Weil who suffered from migraines that kept her in bed for days and who had written about this experience as a basis for her philosophy – but also Ana Mendieta’ work. Mendieta created a series of works in response to the rape and murder of Sara Ann Otten in 1973. In one performance she covered herself in blood recreating the victim’s poses as they were described in newspaper articles. Mendieta has said that all her works are in some sense a personal response to issues she cannot see herself responding to theoretically. Mendieta used blood like it is used in rituals of the Afro-Cuban religion of Santeria but did not subscribe to one religion. In her notebook from 1980, she stated: “my art is grounded in the belief of one universal energy which runs through everything: from insect to man, from man to spectre, from spectre to plant from plant to galaxy. My works are the irrigation veins of this universal fluid. Through them ascend the ancestral sap, the original beliefs, the primordial accumulations, the unconscious thoughts that animate the world”.

Text by Maya Tounta

Thanasis Totsikas (born 1951) lives and works in Nikaia, Larissa. He is a skilled luthier, cutler and autobody-repair technician. This expertness has shaped his artistic practice and has been present in his work since his first solo presentation at Desmos Gallery in 1982. His prolific career has included participations at the Venice Biennale and Documenta. His artworks, expressive of a way of life more than the outcome of vocation, often incorporate objects and materials from his every day as diverse as mud and reeds and a Ducati motorcycle.

Link: Thanasis Totsikas at Akwa Ibom

The post Thanasis Totsikas at Akwa Ibom first appeared on Contemporary Art Daily.

from Contemporary Art Daily https://bit.ly/3jdiKcI

#micaramel

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kateemmerson · 6 years ago

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Home Owners - 10 ways you unconsciously sabotage the speedy SALE of your home.

10 ways you are unconsciously self-sabotaging the speedy SALE of your home!

88% of people are guilty of number 3, but NO-ONE takes it seriously. Seriously?

Selling your home? Yuck! We all know that selling a home elicits dread, anxiety and heightened stress.

Perhaps for you, there’s a small dose of excitement about the future – but seldom glee and delight about the whole process that lies ahead.

If you dare announce to your friends at the dinner table you are about to sell, that statement will elicit groans of sympathy, followed instantly by stories from hell; opinions about how it’s currently only a buyer’s market, how realtors will rip you off, the awful removal companies will break precious belongings, or worse steal your stuff, what an awful upheaval, oi vey – the packing, the mounds of endless paperwork and basically just implying ….“are you mad?” And so it will go on, blah blah blah.

Do you know anyone that LOVES selling and moving home?

Yes, my clients!

I’m Kate Emmerson, the Quick Shift Deva and I am hell-bent on shifting home sellers (and realtors supporting them) to approach this from a unique and different angle. To feel way less stressed, more in control, at peace and actually excited about uprooting life, heart and home when selling this time. To be able to embrace this dreaded process with a lightness of expectation of what’s unfolding.

This is such a potentially powerful and pivotal time in your life – one that is your worst nightmare that fills you with angst and stress, or one that can be done with grace, ease and speed through the transition.

Can you imagine going against the status quo and being able to say how the selling process was effortless, smooth and life-changing? As an expert in letting go and moving on, I’ve spent 16 years researching homeowners and homes, understanding what keeps them stuck at the internal, deeply psychological level. When you’re truly ready to move on, from the inside out, your home will sell with speed and ease.

I challenge you to have an open mind as you keep reading…

For most home sellers, the notion of getting your home ready to let strangers and realtors trudge unceremoniously through your space, opening all the cupboards (oh hell yes!), deciding if this space suits their taste and budget can elicit feelings of terror and panic, even in the most resilient of folk.

There’s always a heady mixture of emotions contemplating selling your home, aren’t there? It’s debilitating and overwhelming. Life is already busy and stressful enough, and this is just a huge added burden on your plate.

All sorts of things come into play.

How will you pack everything?

To realtor or not to realtor?

Are you making the right decision and have clarity about what you want?

Who to trust to move your worldly possessions?

Will doggie Rufus adjust to the new house?

Will grandpa be ok in the new home?

How will you ever get your home show -day ready with all your current obligations?

Gasp -what about that hideous overflowing garage and shed you never get to clearing out. It’s downright embarrassing!

Will you ever find a beautiful new space that feels like home again?

Will your worldly possessions ever fit into that new space?

BREATHE.

While it’s true you will have to dig deep to face the above, and most people hate it, what if I shared there is something far more critical that is the real sabotage to selling your home? It all starts with you and what’s going on inside.

If you are reading this article and wondering how YOU might be sabotaging the sale of your home, chances are you are in one of a few places – where are you right now?

Where do you find yourself right now?

A. Life is changing rapidly, and you are contemplating selling your home. This would be an exciting and aspirational move to upsize, downsize or life-size. But right now you are unsure along with a mixture of dread and excitement – you don’t even know what’s involved up ahead.

B. You are unfortunately being ‘forced to sell’ your home at this time (perhaps due to economic, death, health, divorce or relocating), and both resisting and dreading everything about your life right now it. It’s all too much to handle, it really shouldn’t be happening, you are in shock, and now you have to wrench yourself from your safe nest. It couldn’t get any worse.

C. Your home is not selling and has spent way too many DOM’s (Days on Market), but you really need this property to sell fast. Enough already! There have just been far too many people trudging through the doors, you are sick ‘n tired of your realtor and no real offers to purchase are materializing. You are losing hope of ever selling, you blame your realtor, feel frustrated, trapped, and can’t move forward.

Perhaps you are a Realtor wanting to up your professional game and find unique ways to support your clients to sell faster and with more ease. You are interested in unique ways to help you do your job better – you’re brilliant at what you do, but know something is missing that’s outside your scope of expertise. You’re confused why a perfect property is somehow not shifting on the market, or you know your client needs help to get a grip on making peace with their life, moving on and handling emotional and physical clutter. You are exhausted from everything being an uphill battle with your sellers and need a business boost. You might find THIS ARTICLE I wrote much more suited to you and your profession. Or better yet grab my full 19 page E-Book for realtors HERE

Typical scenarios that unfold during the selling process:

You make the decision to sell your home

You consider selling privately to reduce paying commissions – with the internet, you think it is much easier nowadays

You might contact a local realtor/estate agent to sell your home

Either you or the realtor/estate agent, gather current evaluations by looking at recent house sales in your area

Using this information and some market research, you come up with a market‐related price

Depending on where in the world you live, ‘home‐staging’ may be part of your realtor’s professional service to accentuate and highlight the assets of your home

You put your home on the market & wait for it to magically sell. After all, your job is done now, right?

And then you keep playing the waiting game- usually abdicating all responsibility!

Realistically, the price you want for your home is generally related to several factors: Yes, be honest!

The outstanding amount you still owe on your current mortgage/bond. Argh!

Other debt you might, have that you’re hoping to squash with accrued profit from selling your home

What you originally paid for the property

The money you have invested in upgrading and maintaining your property all these years

Your emotional attachment to the house and what you “feel” it’s worth (usually higher in your head than realistic!)

Other personal factors that might come into play to influence what you believe your precious home must sell for

So how do you start thinking differently about this whole property game?

Here are Kate’s 10 ways you are unconsciously self-sabotaging the speedy SALE of your home!

PART 1: LOOSEN YOUR EMOTIONAL GRIP

SAY ‘GOODBYE’ EARLY ON All sellers fall into this trap, and it’s the first way you will sabotage your sale! It’s also the one no-one else out there talks about because it is considered too fluffy. But it will affect the speed, ease, and ultimately the financial aspect of the sale. This is the single most significant factor that you are 100% in control of and the one to take the most seriously. You have to be ready in your heart and entirely at peace to welcome this move BEFORE you put the “For Sale” up! Take control early on and emotionally “detach” from your home and say goodbye to this era of your life with mindful intent. Emotional closure right upfront will bring acceptance and significantly reduce stress. Most sellers wait till move day to get the emotions in check and wonder why it’s so unbearably stressful. This psychological, emotional, and mental shift is how Kate supports her clients (with life-changing practical exercises) at this pivotal time to ensure you do not sabotage the potential sale. You are energetically and emotionally embedded into every brick in our homes, and you have to loosen this grip before you can move on.Homeowners don’t usually wonder about how your “energy” is embedded into every brick and mortar of your home. This is where you realized your dream of owning this home, perhaps had your first child, started your business, danced around the kitchen table after signing the big corporate deal, made love to your partner, and watched little Jamie take his first steps.It might also be a space signifying struggle, heartache and pain – and now you have to say goodbye. It’s all very complicated at a heart level and most folks don’t know how to approach this time and process

STOP CALLING IT ‘HOME’ Too many sellers sabotage the process and hold on with double doses of superglue! You intensify emotional attachment, heartache and stress, by continually referring to this space as your ‘home.’ Yes, of course it has been your home, but one of the shifts to make is to consider yourself, from this moment onwards, as a custodian of this space and start thinking of your home as a house. The challenge is that from now on, every time you speak about it or think about it (after you have done the emotional closure that Kate’s teaches), is to always use the term HOUSE instead of home! Better yet, think of it as a guesthouse always ready to welcome new guests. You can catch Kate live on the radio sharing her home selling tips to Shado Twala on SAFM

CATCH A WAKE UP ABOUT WHAT’S LURKING IN EVERY CORNER Most sellers do a little tidy up around the house, but 88% of the homes I get called into just don’t take this seriously! You keep thinking you will clear out properly when you finally pack the boxes and move. Beep! Buyers will open cupboards, and more importantly, they will get a “feel” of the house. If it feels stuffy, cluttered and overfull, they’ll feel stifled in the space even if it is seemingly the perfect house for them on paper and budget-wise. The moment you decide to sell, please get stuck into de-cluttering every single inch of your space. You need to, as I like to refer to it, Zap Your Kr@p – Not only will it make your house appear more spacious and light for the buyer, but you will also not lug any “stuff” that no longer serves you into the next phase of your life.A house move is an ideal time to purge at every level. Let go and live a little lighter, taking only that which you love, use and respect into your new home.If YOU fill up too much of the house, there is no room for the buyer to breathe life into this space. Tone down that bright cerise wall, get rid of 75% of your objets d’art and remove the 30 family photographs stuck on the wall! Buyers need to be able to envisage THEMSELVES living in this space.

READ PART 2 CLICK HERE, OR EVEN BETTER JUST CLICK THE IMAGE BELOW TO DOWNLOAD THE ENTIRE E-BOOK AT ZERO COST

Home Owners – 10 ways you unconsciously sabotage the speedy SALE of your home. was originally published on Kate Emmerson - The Quick Shift Deva

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