Siren Symphony in G sharp

Pavlina Vagioni SIREN

SYMPHONY IN G SHARP

Pavlina Vagioni SIREN SYMPHONY IN G SHARP

A Visual Symphony in Four Movements 6 - 29 October 2022

Catalog © Pavlina Vagioni, 2022

Designed: George Vacharis (Elikon Graphic Arts)

Text: Audra Lambert Elizabeth Plessa Thouli Misirloglou

Images: All the images included in this exhibition: © Pavlina Vagioni, 2022, courtesy Pavlina Vagioni Photography: Nikos Libertas, Nikos Simatos, Pavlina Vagioni Page 11: © Print Collector, Hulton Archive (Getty Images) Page 14: © Heritage Images, Hulton Fine Art Collection (Getty Images)

Printed: Elikon Graphic Arts www.elikon-print.gr

Published on the occasion of the exhibition

ISBN 978-618-00-4205-4

All right reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmit ted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photo copy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

To ΜΒΕΗ

Obfuscated Archetype and Phantasmagoric Myth in the Work of

Pavlina Vagioni

By Audra Lambert, Independent Curator

Pavlina Vagioni’s solo exhibition, Siren Symphony in G Sharp , on view during Fall 2022 at Kappatos Gallery, offers a modern-day consideration of myth that reveals artistic re-examinations of the subject as relates to society’s contemporary values. Kappatos Gallery and its world-class exhibitions and programs offer a platform conducive to Vagioni’s expansive and nuanced artistic vocabulary. Through this ambitious and multi-sensory exhibition, Vagioni expands contemporary dialogue around mythology’s enduring impact on art, identifying multidimensional facets of mythological figures. Her installation, sculpture, painting and new media works combine to present a reconsideration of the hegemony of archetype across artistic disciplines. Throughout this first solo exhibit with the gallery, the artist embraces an intensive, interdisciplinary investigation, applying her creative efforts through systems of thought spanning art history, literature, music and mathematics.

In her comprehensive, research-based process, the artist transposes sets of knowledge by communicating in fragments - wings, visible light, organic line - composited throughout her paintings, installation and sculpture. Through abstracted and figurative elements alike, Vagioni obfuscates the singular archetypal figure by dwelling on the details rather than with straightforward representation. As such, Vagioni resurrects the archetype by considering

it through decidedly contemporary frameworks. In works on view, the artist translates notions of hubris and immortality into forms communicating these precepts to a present-day audience. In Siren Symphony in G Sharp, the artist produces a cohesive body of work that obfuscates the one-dimensional archetype, reconsidering the multiple aspects of meaning in a visionary re-evaluation of figures in Greek myth and folklore.

Re-Examining Myth

Surveying Vagioni’s works on view in this exhibition, the artist concomitantly explores multiple associative frameworks expressed throughout myth and allegory. Paintings and installation work on view explore what contemporary meanings myth can inhabit in the artist’s practice. The trajectory of myth’s consideration in art historical literature has been determined throughout most of history by homogenous, patriarchal systems of thought. As noted by Post-Structural theorist H.V. Scott, “The late twentieth-century diffusion of post-structuralism resulted in the profound destabilizing of old certainties that had once underpinned academic thought and practice across the humanities and social sciences.” Vagioni’s works similarly upend these previously entrenched academic positions by questioning the dimension of myth in spaces where the meanings and attributions of mythological

1 Kitchin, Rob, Nigel J. Thrift, and HV Scott. “Geography and the Politics of Representation: An Overview.” In International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, 351–56. Elsevier, 2009.

2 Department of Greek and Roman Art. “Greek Art in the Archaic Period. ”Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/argk/hd_argk.htm (October 2003)

3 Cooney, John D. “Siren and Ba, Birds of a Feather.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 55, no. 8 (1968): 262–71. http:// www.jstor.org/stable/25152230.

4 Gresseth, Gerald K. “The Homeric Sirens.” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 101 (1970): 203–18. https://doi.org/10.2307/2936048.

contexts have remained relatively unchallenged throughout history: across the literary and visual arts landscapes.

Throughout Siren Symphony in G Sharp, the artist’s alchemical processes of transforming mythological archetypes from a single interpretation toward a multiplicity and hybridity of forms offer a compelling contrast to staid, historicized academic perspectives on the subject. Vagioni’s concentrated focus on mythic figures such as the Sirens probe multi-disciplinary expressions of artistic forms, resulting in new interpretations of mythological and cultural studies in visual art. The artist employs vision, shadow and mystery in many of her works in dialogue with the concept of phantasia to produce a lingering uncertainty, thus implicating the visitor to the exhibition within their own perceptions of the works they encounter and creating a viable pathway toward reconsidering the archetype as a multi-faceted entity.

The Sirens

Where multiplicity is present, unity and continuity are generally perceived to be absent. Yet the source of myth, Ancient Greece - particularly in the Archaic period - was itself defined by regional differentiation and hybridity of forms influenced by the expanse of the kingdom and its vast trading network. As a result, what is traditionally perceived to be myth and folklore with Greek origins can actually incorporate a wide influx of imagery and influence from across the Mediterranean, North Africa and beyond. The academic treatment of the archetypal Siren, as indicated in literature, has its origins in Homer’s epic, The Odyssey. Various

cultural historians, meanwhile, have ascribed the actual mythic figure of the Siren in material culture as a figure in dialogue with ancient Near Eastern and Egyptian mythologies. The perceived unity of the archetype of Siren is a perception which is, in fact, challenged from its very origin point - an origin that was molded from a hybridity of influences.

Cultural scholar Gerald K. Gresseth challenges the idea of Siren as a monolithic figure, instead considering the motif as rooted within a system of points linked by variegated folkloric motifs. Gresseth observes, “Folklore is not, as a rule, discrete bits of unrelated tradition handed down in random fashion; but rather, …a fairly complex association of themes and motifs that have a tendency to attract and cling to one another.”

Detail from an Attic red-figure stamnos depicting the Siren episode in the Odyssey, (c. 480-450 BCE), British Museum, London.

Thus, ascribing traits to Sirens from a multidimensional perspective more accurately conveys the meaning they embody in relation to Greek culture and myth as separate from its distinct literary associations. The Siren as archetype in Homer’s Odyssey appears as an exoticized form of sea creature with human, bird and marine life features, which the epic’s main character, Ulysses, encounters while traversing the Mediterranean. This epic depicts its voyagers encountering a range of figures, cultures and landscapes - a span that is congruent with Vagioni’s own diaphanous, multi-faceted approach

to exploring the Siren as archetype.

In Vagioni’s work, Phantasmagoria of the Sirens – Allegro con Brio, the artist emphasizes the Sirens’ embodiment through various fragments rather than pictorially representing the figure as a unified whole. The artist focuses on a specific motif in this painting: that of the Sirens’ wings, an element that draws on multiple meanings in a mythological context. “The bird is an ancient symbol of transcendence, the soul, a spirit of the dead,” reflects Vagioni, “with an ability to communicate with gods or enter into a higher state of consciousness, thought, knowledge and imagination. A cage of birds represents the mind, according to Plato.5 In the Odyssey, the Siren-bird represents the entrapment of the mind. A metaphorical transfixion where our ego is endlessly recycled.” This metaphorical system of associations linked to a single aspect of the Sirens provokes a reconsideration of the Sirens’ meaning: opening up new avenues of philosophical inquiry for these literary figures. Art historian Thouli Misirloglou, Ph.D., observes that with regard to Vagioni’s Siren series, “...in any case, (this reconsideration of Siren as symbol) is at the frontiers of imagination and reality, at the point where they both intersect, merge and reconstruct.”

Further consideration of the meaning contained within the term ‘phantasmagoria’ from the artwork’s title - which expresses a divergence from reality and a descent into the realm of fantasy and nightmare - is in its very nature both transient and illusory. “Phantasia (is) an ancient notion that may be translated as ‘apparition,’ with all of that word’s diverse connotations including those of mental image and phantom …Jackie

Studio Pavlina Vagioni - Athens with the artist’s grand piano and a scale model of Kappatos Gallery space.

5

Pigeaud notes: “We are surrounded, bathed in phantasia, in apparitions. Some come into our view from without, as is the case with sensation, visual perception.”6 The overlay of wings and winged figures in this suite of works produces overwhelming visual stimuli that create the apparition of abstracted painterly brushstrokes and lines, a rhythmic process of layering color and form in a nearly hypnotic style of composition building. Thus, Vagioni’s visual cues throughout the exhibit allude to apparition and repetition as a means of extending the potential meaning of Siren as a motif beyond their historic archetypal association.

Visual stimuli in the suite of works exhibited combine with a rhythmic sensuality once the term Allegro con Brio is recognized in the title. This term references Beethoven’s striking yet tensionfilled masterpiece, further expanding a sensorial phantasia into the language of music and, by implication, mathematics. The wings interspersed throughout these paintings dominate the picture plane yet, in their repetition, become undulating motifs that form a symphony of composition in the manner of a musical notation. Thus, a multisensory experience of this artwork is summarily contained within its very title, expressing a means of considering the far-reaching implications of the Siren as a visual motif and harbinger of song. Vagioni considers the aspects of the Siren figure, including their musical associations, both in the formal aspects she presents in these artworks and the title ascribed to them. The aspects explored by the artist throughout this body of work, and

the variety of winged elements permeating the picture plane, further extend a multitudinous quality to the archetype of the Siren myth as expressed in contemporary artistic expression.

This multiplicity of meaning also permeates the artist’s body of work, Siren Topologies – Adagio. The multidimensional qualities captured by both visual and musical aspects of the Siren as motif are communicated in this title, while the formal aspects of Vagioni’s wall-mounted sculpture transpose the psychological and environmental cartographies of the spaces that Sirens inhabit, from white seaside caps to the mountainous Mediterranean islands. By its nature, the call and response of Siren invite consideration of self in response to the environment. In a similar fashion, the sculptural forms of Siren Topologies – Adagio marks the artist’s foray into balancing materiality, organic curvature and line, and negative/ positive space. A mathematical topology denotes structures preserved under continuous deformities, such as stretching and warping. The Siren’s song, and its ability to psychologically and metaphysically transform those who hear their song, is implicated in this shifting sense of the term topology. The concept also calls to mind the changes which occur in mythological translations generation after generation, language across language, in both literature and the visual arts: while the story may be warped or stretched, the original version remains for the diligent scholar to uncover.

Reconsiderations of form and meaning also emerge

6

London, UK: Routledge, 2017.

Cooper, JC. An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Traditional Symbols. Thames & Hudson, 1987.

Hirsh, Jennie, and Sophie-Isabelle Dufour. “Video Art in the House of Hades.” In Contemporary Art and Classical Myth, 295–309.

in an installation the artist has positioned in threedimensional space as part of the exhibition. This sculptural cluster, part of the artist’s Adagio suite of works, references art historical precedent in its three-dimensional re-interpretation of Ulysses’ encounter with the Sirens as depicted in John William Waterhouse’s 1891 painting on this very subject. The physical presence of the ship and the outsize figuration of Ulysses, his crew and the sirens throughout the composition communicate a visceral, emotionally charged narrative. This sculptural presence translates to Vagioni’s vision for how the visitor can navigate the physical exhibition space in direct relation to this mythical encounter, allowing guests to form their own perceptions around spatial relationships and overlapping imagery in the process. The geometric and abstract nature of the installation’s formal elements, especially with the inclusion of the mirrored floor pieces, create a means by which the viewer is necessarily confronted with themselves - in the present day - in relation to the enduring Siren myth. When the self is considered as an element within the enduring myth of the Siren as archetype, it necessarily subverts the

singular notion of the Siren as confined to one specific era or embodiment. In the kinetic light sculpture in the Siren Interstices – Scherzo section, the artist’s alchemical approach to darkness and light implicates the viewer, giving rise to a phenomenological phantasia. The light patterns in this kinetic sculpture-as-installation evoke the shadows and mystery of Circe’s cave dwelling while recalling the Siren in the presence of sculptural wings. The subtle shifts in movement and shadow present in this work intimate at expanded dimensions of the Sirens’ own identity, which may remain hidden or unexpressed, offering a window into the fraught psychological states that may be experienced not only by the Sirens’ victims but perhaps even by the supernatural Sirens themselves. This confusion of perception and reality echoes the phantasia’s ability to “create… a constant confusion between the referent and its…reflection.”7

Installation and the Archetype

Vagioni’s exhibition contains one last lingering installation in The Encounter –Rondo section. Concluding the exhibition, Isle of the Sirens is a multi-sensory installation that can be considered by juxtaposing the convergence of Circe and the Sirens and the ideas of selfabsorption present in the myth of Narcissus. The cave-like structure creates an intimate and immediate space where visitors can confront the mysterious and secret within themselves in relation to the enduring presence of these mythological subjects. Moving

John William Waterhouse, Ulysses and The Sirens (1891), NGV Melbourne.

imagery and music permeate the structure’s interior, with the artist’s Fuga delle Sirene within the installation. This stimulating environment also serves as the inspiration for new NFTs, which the artist has explicitly created in dialogue with this exhibition. This cross-discipline aspect of the installation work, incorporating a performative event whereby visitors encounter mirror-masked performers, further investigates concepts around identity and image. The nature of the mirrored surfaces viewers encounter via these masked performers mimics the Sirens’ practice of awaiting passing voyagers to seduce them with intimate details of their identities as a means of enchanting them.

The myth of Narcissus also necessarily foregrounds notions of identity, image and spectator. Jennie Hirsch notes in her scholarly writings on the installation work of Felix GonzalezTorres, that the “...spatial and temporal logic of the Narcissus myth (is) utilized by the artist to highlight the questions of spectatorship.”8 Thus, the Isle of the Sirens installation can seemingly precipitate an encounter with self and a natural extension of one’s identity in dialogue with the Sirens’ actions and Narcissus’ fraught selfrecognition. The lessons emerging from the myth of the Sirens and the myth of Narcissus’ deadly obsession with his image both imply the psychological impact, at times bordering on violence, that emerges from grappling with one’s own vision of their identity. In a post-structural sense, perceptions, identity mapping and

spectatorship form a hybrid process by which one emphasizes the contemporary need for multiple meanings to confront the entrenched singularity of archetype. We, as visitors, become subjects encountering and voyaging through the enduring mystery of mythology across cultural contexts. As noted by scholar James Cahill, “Ancient myth is therefore a live presence in contemporary art. But …modern works…also make it clear that myth is, and perhaps always was, more than a visual storybook…it is also a way of seeing.”9

Detail of So they spoke, and my heart was fain to listen

7 Hirsh, Jennie, and Sophie-Isabelle Dufour. “Video Art in the House of Hades.”

8 Hirsh, Jennie. “Double-Take, or Theorizing Reflection in Felix Gonzalez-Torres.” In Contemporary Art and Classical Myth, 295–309. London, UK: Routledge, 2017.

9 Cahill, James, Diane Fortenberry, and Rebecca Morrill. “This Thing of Darkness: On the Shifting Role of Myth in Art.” Preface. In Flying Too Close to the Sun Myths in Art from Classical to Contemporary, 9–16. London, UK: Phaidon Press Limited, 2018.

Move ment 1

Phantasmagoria of the Sirens _ Allegro con Brio

Diaphanous Creatures 2022

Oil on linen

160x160 cm (62 ⁶³/₆₄’’ x 62 ⁶³/₆₄’’)

The Sirens call you by your name 2021 Oil on linen 130x120 cm (51 ³/₁₆’’ x 47 ¹/₄’’)

The Sirens know everything about you 2021

Oil and oil pastel on linen 130x120 cm (51 ³/₁₆’’ x 47 ¹/₄’’)

The Sirens flatter your ego 2021

Oil and oil pastel on linen 130x120 cm (51 ³/₁₆’’ x 47 ¹/₄’’)

Come hither, as thou farest 2021-2022

Oil, oil pastel, encaustic wax on plywood and electrostatic paint on bronze. Variable dimensions

Move ment 2

Siren Topologies

_ Adagio

Leather, galvanized sheet metal, plywood, MDF board, acrylic mirror, motors, 3D printed ABS filament, oil, oil pastel, encaustic wax 200 x 213 x 142 cm (78 ⁴⁷/₆₄’’ x 83 ⁵⁵/₆₄’’ x 55 ²⁹/₃₂’’)

“Having rhapsody M (book 12) as a starting point, Pavlina Vagioni creates an interactive multimedia environment, where the viewer is called to activate with their presence a personal visual rendering of the island of the Sirens, as it is approached in the Homeric epic, by Odysseus and his comrades.

Image and movement make up the diptych that composes Anthemoessa by stimulating the eye and the body of the viewer accordingly. Mirrors, positioned at right angles, form a seemingly nonphysical curtain since it absorbs the surrounding reflections. These mirrors create perpetual binary pairs of real and idol, confounding the actual and virtual limits, simultaneously alluding to the dual nature of the winged Sirens.

The familiar image of our own reality, through its reflection, is questioned and transformed into the eerie reality of the artwork.

The disquieting aspect of this visual landscape is enhanced by the movement of the painted wings, which are activated with the passing motion of the viewer.”

Elizabeth Plessa Art historian – Curator

Anthemoessa 2021

“The almost monochromatic atmosphere of the installation is paradoxically reversed by the colored floor made of natural leather squares in earth tones, which allude to the heap of bones and shriveling skin of the bewitched men on the shore of the island. Like a pixelated image decomposed into its constituent pixels, this meadow of death becomes painterly joy, a fugue of color planes that become autonomous and prevail, in an artwork that Pavlina Vagioni envisages as a theatrical stage that is concluded with the involvement of the viewer, in a path of loss or acknowledgment of the self”.

Elizabeth Plessa Independent Curator - Art Historian

Siren Topology I 2022

Bronze, leather, plywood, tapestry filling, aluminum wire mesh

146 x 91 x 28 cm (57 ³¹/₆₄’’ x 35 ⁵³/₆₄’’ x 11 ¹/₃₂’’)

Siren Topology II 2022

Bronze, leather, plywood, tapestry filling, aluminum wire mesh 143 x 100 x 24 cm (56 ¹⁹/₆₄ x 39 ³/₈ x 9 ²⁹/₆₄’’)

Siren Topology III 2022

Bronze, leather, plywood, tapestry filling, aluminum wire mesh 143 x 89 x 20 cm (56 ¹⁹/₆₄’’ x 35 ³/₆₄’’ x 7 ⁷/₈’’)

Siren Topology IV 2022

Bronze, leather, plywood, tapestry filling, aluminum wire mesh

135,5 x 99 x 22 cm (53 ¹¹/₃₂’’ x 38 ³¹/₃₂’’ x 8 ²¹/₃₂’’)

Siren Topology V 2022

Bronze, leather, plywood, tapestry filling, aluminum wire mesh

133 x 89 x 18,5 cm (52 ²³/₆₄’’ x 35 ³/₆₄’’ x 7 ⁹/₃₂’’)

Siren Topology VI 2022

Bronze, leather, plywood, tapestry filling, aluminum wire mesh

87.5 x 142 x 20 cm (34 ²⁹/₆₄’’ x 55 ²⁹/₃₂’’ x 7 ⁷/₈’’)

So they spoke, and my heart was fain to listen 2022 Supermirror stainless steel, bronze, oil on wood 170 x 235 x 104 cm (66 ⁵⁹/₆₄’’ x 92 ³³/₆₄’’ x 40 ¹⁵/₁₆’’)

Move ment 3

The Siren Interstices

We know all things that come to pass upon the fruitful earth 2022

Marine grade plywood, motor, sheet metal, iron frame, resin, led lighting, plexiglass, oil, acrylic, cables. 134 x 240 x 145 cm ( 52 ³/₄’’ x 94 ³¹/₆₄’’ x 57 ³/₃₂’’ )

Scherzo delle Sirene 2022

Digital painting printed on canvas 77 x 100 cm ( 30 ⁵/₁₆’’ x 39 ³/₈’’ )

Move ment 4

The Encounter _ Rondo

Fuga delle Sirene 2021 Digitally animated video with audio Duration: 53’’

Isle of the Sirens 2022

Styrofoam, polyurethane foam, acrylic resin, fiberglass, acrylic paint, graphite powder varnish, wood, plexiglass, video projection, speakers. 250 x 400 x 400 cm (98 ²⁷/₆₄’’ x 157 ³¹/₆₄’’ x 157 ³¹/₆₄’’)

“The illusion of birds, in combination with the particularly elaborate lyrical music composition… brings to completion an otherworldly universe... finding that almost magical realm where art becomes the passage to another reali ty. Into the reality that leaves behind the surrounding bustle and allows for astonishment and daydreaming.”

Thouli Misirloglou Ph.D. Art History

The Encounter 2022

A pair of black costumes with black leather two-way mirror masks

“Maybe the intention of the work on behalf of the artist is to offer a different approach to the myth of the Sirens- these sea creatures of Hellenic mythology depicted with a human female headand bird-like body, seducing the ignorant sailors with their song. What occurs, in any case, is at the frontiers of imagination and reality, at the point where they both intersect, merge and reconstruct.”

Thouli Misirloglou Ph.D. Art History

1975 2020 2016 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018

Pavlina Vagioni

Born in Athens, Greece. Lives and works between Athens, Greece and Houston, TX, USA

Education

First Prize and Unanimous Excellence Artist Diploma in Voice, Phaethon Conservatory, Alexandroupolis Music Society, Alexandroupolis, Greece MFA (Hons) in Painting, Athens School of Fine Arts, Athens, Greece

Select Exhibitions/Performances

Solo Exhibition, Siren Symphony in G sharp, Kappatos Gallery, Athens, Greece (catalog) Iakovos Kambanellis, the Tetraptych, Hellenic American Union, Athens, Greece (catalog) The Best of Both Worlds: Figurative and Abstract, Sawyer Yards, Houston, TX, USA Art Celebrates the Story, Sawyer Yards, Houston, TX, USA Αbstraction V, Envision Arts Gallery, Dallas, TX, USA, online Splash, Drip, Throw, Visionary Art Collective, Boston, MA, USA, online

Sculpture Exhibition, Chamber of Fine Arts of Greece, Byzantine and Christian Museum, Athens, Greece (catalog)

1821 Visual of a Revolution, GR Collectors, War Museum, Athens, Greece (catalog) Art Athina Virtual 2021, Kappatos Gallery, Athens, Greece Fall Biannual Art Show, Sawyer Yards, Houston, TX, USA Regarding Space, Sawyer Yards, Houston, TX, USA At the End of the Tunnel, Sawyer Yards, Houston, TX, USA Into the Wild, Art Fluent Gallery, Boston, MA, USA, online The Marks We Make, The Curator’s Salon, London, UK, online

Art in Isolation, North Dakota Museum of Art, Grand Forks, ND, USA Repeating Patterns, Sawyer Yards, Houston, TX, USA

Arias by Verdi & Puccini, Municipal Theater, Alexandroupolis, Greece Summer Pop-Up, Kappatos Gallery, Athens, Greece ASFA Graduates, Kessanlis Hall, Athens, Greece (catalog)

Rooms 2018, Kappatos Gallery, Athens, Greece (catalog) Music Night with Lieder by Mozart and Schumann, Athens Music Society Conservatory, Athens, Greece Music Night with Arias from Opera, Athens Music Society Conservatory, Athens, Greece

16 Graduates of ’16, Agathi Kartalos Gallery, Athens, Greece

Kalei(en)doscope, Athens School of Fine Arts, Athens, Greece A’ Painting Studio, Grigoriadis Collection, Athens, Greece (catalog) Flags-Placards-Banners, Michael Cacoyannis Foundation, Athens, Greece

List of works

Diaphanous Creatures 2022

Oil on linen 160x160 cm (62 ⁶³/₆₄’’ x 62 ⁶³/₆₄’’)

The Sirens call you by your name 2021

Oil on linen 130x120 cm (51 ³/₁₆’’ x 47 ¹/₄’’)

The Sirens know everything about you 2021

Oil and oil pastel on linen 130x120 cm (51 ³/₁₆’’ x 47 ¹/₄’’)

The Sirens flatter your ego 2021

Oil and oil pastel on linen 130x120 cm (51 ³/₁₆’’ x 47 ¹/₄’’)

Come hither, as thou fairest 2021-2022

Oil, oil pastel and encaustic wax on plywood Dimensions variable

They will sing your mind away on their meadow lolling 2022

Οil, oil stick, oil pastel, cotton, encaustic wax οn linen and leather on plywood 200 x 200 cm ( 78 ⁴⁷/₆₄ ‘’ x 78 ⁴⁷/₆₄’’)

Anthemoessa 2021

Leather, galvanized sheet metal, plywood, MDF board, acrylic mirror, motors, 3D printed ABS filament, oil, oil pastel, encaustic wax 200 x 213 x 142 cm (78 ⁴⁷/₆₄’’ x 83 ⁵⁵/₆₄’’ x 55 ²⁹/₃₂’’)

Siren Topology I 2022

Bronze, leather, plywood, tapestry filling, aluminum wire mesh 146 x 91 x 28 cm (57 ³¹/₆₄’’ x 35 ⁵³/₆₄’’ x 11 ¹/₃₂’’

Siren Topology II 2022

Bronze, leather, plywood, tapestry filling, aluminum wire mesh 143 x 100 x 24 cm (56 ¹⁹/₆₄ x 39 ³/₈ x 9 ²⁹/₆₄’’)

Siren Topology III 2022

Bronze, leather, plywood, tapestry filling, aluminum wire mesh 143 x 89 x 20 cm (56 ¹⁹/₆₄’’ x 35 ³/₆₄’’ x 7 ⁷/₈’’)

Siren Topology IV 2022

Bronze, leather, plywood, tapestry filling, aluminum wire mesh 135,5 x 99 x 22 cm (53 ¹¹/₃₂’’ x 38 ³¹/₃₂’’ x 8 ²¹/₃₂’’)

Siren Topology V 2022

Bronze, leather, plywood, tapestry filling, aluminum wire mesh 133 x 89 x 18,5 cm (52 ²³/₆₄’’ x 35 ³/₆₄’’ x 7 ⁹/₃₂’’)

Siren Topology VI 2022

Bronze, leather, plywood, tapestry filling, aluminum wire mesh 87.5 x 142 x 20 cm (34 ²⁹/₆₄’’ x 55 ²⁹/₃₂’’ x 7 ⁷/₈’’)

So they spoke, and my heart was fain to listen 2022

Supermirror stainless steel, bronze, oil on wood 170 x 235 x 104 cm (66 ⁵⁹/₆₄’’ x 92 ³³/₆₄’’ x 40 ¹⁵/₁₆’’)

We know all things that come to pass upon the fruitful earth 2022

Marine grade plywood, motor, sheet metal, iron frame, resin, led lighting, plexiglass, oil, acrylic, cables. 134 x 240 x 145 cm ( 52 ³/₄’’ x 94 ³¹/₆₄’’ x 57 ³/₃₂’’ )

Fuga delle Sirene 2021

Digitally animated video with audio Duration: 53’’

Isle of the Sirens 2022

Styrofoam, polyurethane foam, acrylic resin, fiberglass, acrylic paint, graphite powder varnish, wood, plexiglass, video projection, speakers. 250 x 400 x 400 cm (98 ²⁷/₆₄’’ x 157 ³¹/₆₄’’ x 157 ³¹/₆₄’’)

The Encounter 2022

A pair of black costumes with black leather two-way mirror masks

Acknowledgments

Alfred Iliri – studio assistant

Nikos Economou – studio assistant

Freddy Gizas – fabrication

Panagiotis Lazaridis – fabrication

Savvas Paraskeyas - mechanical engineering

Tasos Tarlas – electronic engineering

Nikos Gavalas – metal casting

Tasos Tsiamboulas – digital animation

Αvisec Vassilis Panagiotidis – projection and sound

Vasilis Kountouris – audio effects

Ioanna Vlagkouli – choreography

Myrto Charitaki – performer

Maria Papaioannou – performer

Panagiota Tsombanaki – costume maker

Nikos Sdralis – framing

Studio Pavlina Vagioni - Athens

Dionysios Tortorelis

Martha Pefani

Audra Lambert

Elizabeth Plessa

Thouli Misirloglou

Marc Franklin Κοstas Aposporis and Natalie Vagioni

A very special thank you to