BARELY PERCEPTIBLE
Barely Perceptible is a duo show by Valia Lolidou and Kyklothymia presented at The Eye Altering Gallery. Their artistic collaboration produces a polyphonic environment where the female body becomes the core of a narrative that unravels the binary, contradictory, even antagonistic relationship between subject and object, inside and outside, self and other.
The exhibition Barely Perceptible, curated by Eleni Giannakouli opens on 30.05.
The central installation, Liminal, is modeled after Coty Gogousi Camatcho.
Read more about the exhibition at theeyealtering.com.
BARELY PERCEPTIBLE
VALIA LOLIDOU & KYKLOTHYMIA
30/05/2024 - 28/06/2024
Barely Perceptible is a duo show by Valia Lolidou and Kyklothymia presented at The Eye Altering Gallery. Their artistic collaboration produces a polyphonic environment where the female body becomes the core of a narrative that unravels the binary, contradictory, even antagonistic relationship between subject and object, inside and outside, self and other.
The artists transform the gallery space into a place of incidents occupied by a co-created female figure. The body of this figure could have never been just a body. It constitutes a contested territory of convergence where existing preconceptions about the bodily and social functions of the female body are shattered. Due to its functions, presence and materiality, the female body is perceived as abject (in the Kristevanian sense); bodily fluids, the changes inherent in its function and the marks left by the passage of time are a reminder of human fragility and mortality and therefore a threat to the social order. Ιntensifying this distortion, the artists transmute the female figure into a sculptural reminder of the marginalization and importance of the female body.
The abject sparks a reaction of horror since it is perceived as a threat to meaning, marking the blurring of rigid distinctions. Likewise, the abject indicates ambiguity, as not only attracts but also repels; it represents a threat and simultaneously elicits curiosity. The tattooed female figure is a liminal space between the concept of the body in its integrity and the external world, the Self and the non-Self.
This barely perceptible state of “in between-ness”, this moment of transition is the liminal stage, marked by ambiguity, receptivity, and indeterminacy. In this stage all usual limits of thought, self-understanding and behaviors unwind, leading the way to something new.
Around the figure but beyond her reach, Kyklothymia & Lolidou form a second layer of experience placing their personal artworks and unfolding a story of artistic incidents that connect us with the real world helping us to contextualize their/our experiences. The artworks restore a new symbolic order, a place of acceptance of linguistic communication, beyond social conventions revealing that the most regenerative thing is their abjectly closeness to us.
