Crossing & Sourdine

Yioula Hadjigeorgiou: Sourdine &
Eleni Lyra: Crossing
Curated by Dr. Stratis Pantazis

The Cypriot artist Yioula Hadjigeorgiou has given the title Sourdine to her current exhibition at flat1 after the wooden accessory sourdine, which is attached to various instruments and especially to stringed instruments, in order to “muffle” the sound and change its pitch. The majority of works presented in the show are based on the unpublished sixteen films from the 1930s of the Greek musicologist and music educator Spyros Skiadaresis (1904 – 1967), and focus on one of the ethnological exhibitions, known as human zoos, organized at the Jardin d’Agronomie Tropicale in Paris. Specifically, black people from the French colonies in Africa, half-naked, are exhibited as curious anthropoids among the inhabitants, the whites, the “civilized” of the big city. People are reduced to a spectacle, an object of study, a pleasant nothingness: without emotion, mind and substance. Similarly, her fragile “doll” sculptures, made of ashes, become a tribute to the children, victims of the mechanisms of power, who fail to live and dream. They are sensitive to the slightest blow indicating devastation, death and decay.

The Greek artist Eleni Lyra focuses on the human drama in her exhibition Crossing. In her series of photographs (2001 – 2020) printed on cloth, angel-children or angel-elderly are moving away from the earth, heading towards the sky, in a pose reminiscent of the Crucifixion of Christ, a symbol of His crossing from life to death, in order to save humanity and bring purification. Similarly her sculpture with the women’s dress in the shape of the Cross expresses again Lyra’s concern for the weak, while her plaster sculpture, inspired by Hermes or Herma (Ἑρμαῖ) sculptures that first appeared in various parts of Ancient Greece, makes references to gender-based violence. For the artist, women, children and the elderly are often the first victims in the “game” of asserting and subverting power.

Both artists’ works bring to the fore the dark side of our civilization, which has been muffled or beautified. They manage to remind us the truth and the fundamental problems of our “civilized” world. At the same time, several questions are raised, such as: Have our societies progressed (as much as we want to believe) when extreme racist phenomena are still observed worldwide? Are the children and the elderly, the most vulnerable in our societies, protected and respected as much as they deserve? Have there been significant and enough steps forward regarding the position of women in society? Does the financially strong still have more rights?