"Weaving the valleys of love" @Mouzakis - Petalouda (Butterfly) Thread Factory, Athens, Greece.
"Weaving the valleys of love (2023) by Dimitra Skandali attests to the mechanisms and approaches that will potentially allow us to re-connect with our history. The large-scale installation comprises of a vast variety of materials utilising not only thread, seaweed, flowers, bamboo sticks, bulrush, garbage but also coppered organic items, loom needles and other found objects from the factory. Incorporating traditional practices of weaving and knitting as well as fishing net making that she saw and learnt from her ancestors on the Greek island of Paros, the artist underlines the importance of reclaiming the knowledge of the past, bypassing the endemic sense of anxiety and worry that may arise in the process of gaining back our strength and self-belief. Skandali’s work skilfully unlocks the complex situation we are in and attempts to suggest how we can co-exist, centred around the old principles but as we move forward we register and appreciate our differences and uniqueness."
Text: Kostas Prapoglou
"Το έργο Yφαίνοντας τις κοιλάδες της αγάπης (2023) της Δήμητρας Σκανδάλη υποδηλώνει τους μηχανισμούς και τις προσεγγίσεις που δυνητικά θα μας επιτρέψουν να επανασυνδεθούμε με την ιστορία μας. Η εγκατάσταση μεγάλης κλίμακας αποτελείται από μια τεράστια ποικιλία υλικών που εμπεριέχουν όχι μόνο κλωστές, φύκια, λουλούδια, στελέχη μπαμπού, βούρλα, σκουπίδια, βελόνες αργαλειού αλλά και επιχαλκωμένα φυσικά αντικείμενα, και αντικείμενα που βρέθηκαν από το εργοστάσιο. Ενσωματώνοντας παραδοσιακές πρακτικές ύφανσης, πλεξίματος, και κατασκευής διχτυών ψαρέματος που είδε και έμαθε από τους προγόνους της στο νησί της Πάρου, η καλλιτέχνις υπογραμμίζει τη σημασία της ανάκτησης της γνώσης του παρελθόντος, παρακάμπτοντας την ενδημική αίσθηση άγχους και ανησυχίας που μπορεί να προκύψει κατά τη διαδικασία αποκατάστασης της δύναμης και της αυτοπεποίθησής μας. Το έργο της Σκανδάλη ξεκλειδώνει επιδέξια την περίπλοκη κατάσταση στην οποία βρισκόμαστε και επιχειρεί να προτείνει πώς μπορούμε να συνυπάρξουμε, επικεντρωμένοι σε παλαιότερες αρχές, και να προχωρήσουμε μπροστά, καταγράφοντας και εκτιμώντας τις διαφορές αλλά και τη μοναδικότητά μας."
Κείμενο: Κώστας Πράπογλου
Exhibition duration: 21.09-22.10.2023
Non-profit cultural organisation artefact athens presents The Butterfly Effect, a contemporary art exhibition curated by Kostas Prapoglou, which will take place in numerous spaces of the prominent textile manufacturing facilities. The historic textile industry "Butterfly Threads-Mouzakis" was founded by Eleftherios Mouzakis in 1944 and has been operating continuously until today. The exhibition will aim to highlight the history of the factory, which is inextricably linked to the industrial heritage of Greece. The industrial environment with its intense retro-futuristic character will deeply inspire all participating artists and will put visitors in a state of mind, where the real and the imaginary converse and interact. Taking into account the geographical location of the wider area of the factory premises that coincides with the axis of the ancient procession of the Eleusinian Mysteries on the Sacred Road, the exhibition will bring the audience closer to the meaning of inner exploration, existential quests and emotional uplift. The physical hypostasis of yarn as a raw material but also as a derivative / product in innumerable forms, becomes a reference of tradition and national identity on multiple levels. It forms and gives meaning to geographical determinations on a physical and metaphysical level acting at the same time as a springboard for emotional synapses. Such elements concern artists and are some of the main denominators of their repertoire. The conceptual framework of the curatorial practice of this exhibition involves a poetic and allegorical metaphor of the butterfly effect that lends its name to the title of the exhibition. It converses with the fact that an infinitesimal change in the flow of events leads, after the passage of time, to a development of a history dramatically different from the one that would have taken place had the change not occurred.
The viewer will travel to a world where architecture, heavy machines, threads and multi-disciplinary works of art coexist harmoniously and develop an active dialogue with space-time, simultaneously weaving a bond between art and entrepreneurship. Having the unique opportunity to visit these spaces, the public will consider, amongst other things, the prospect of reindustrialisation and the strengthening of domestic production and the collective benefit that could result from such development.
Storage chambers, vast areas with machinery, corridors and passages will constitute a flow of consciousness and form an emotional journey. The workforce, the families who worked in the factory, are also an important and symbolic parameter that undoubtedly establishes a further condition for exploring and celebrating the role of industry. Curator Kostas Prapoglou invites 41contemporary artists to present works that will respond to this unique space (site-specific) and context, creating with their visual, multidisciplinary vocabulary, installations, video, sculptures and painting.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS: Eozen Agopian(Greece), Lydia Andrioti (Greece), Christina Anid (France/Greece/Lebanon), Anna Antarti (Greece), Klitsa Antoniou (Cyprus), Ruth Asawa (USA), Manolis Baboussis (Greece), Orit Ben Shitrit (Israel/USA/Morocco), Robert Cahen (France), Irene Carvajal (Costa Rica/USA), MariaAndromachi Chatzinikolaou (Greece), Marianna Constanti (Cyprus), Susan Daboll (USA), Lydia Dambassina (Greece), Irini Gonou (Greece), Michal Heiman (Israel), KianaHonarmand (Iran), Pushpakaran Kadappath (India), Annita Kalimeri (Greece), Maria Loizidou (Cyprus), Iliodora Margellos (Greece), Despina Meimaroglou (Greece), Stella Meletopoulou (Greece), Eva Nathena (Greece), Theodore Noutsos (Greece), Sandra Osborne (USA), Ada Petranaki (Greece), Lea Petrou (Greece), Pipilotti Rist (Switzerland), Ismini Samanidi (UK/Greece), Evi Savvaidi (Greece), Dimitra Skandali (Greece), Dimitris Skourogiannis (Greece), Franca Sonnino & Maria Jole Serreli (Italy), Marianne Strapatsakis (Greece), Nikos Tranos (Greece), ClaireTsalouchidis-Hadjiminas (Greece), Alison Woods (USA), Sofia Zarari (Greece), Eleni Zouni (Greece).