LIPIU PROJECT

You read the trees, the mountains in the original

You ask: “What do I have to say in this language?”

The wounded animal deep inside you doesn’t answer.

It stays silent.

Katerina Aghelaki-Rooke, Lipiu Revisited

Bien, P. and Constantine and P. and Keeley, E. and Van Dyck, K. (2004) A Century of Greek Poetry 1900-2000. Cosmos Publishing: New Jersey

Greek poet, translator and intellectual, Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke (1939-2020) in her poems Lipiu and Lipiu Revisited (1993) refers to a heterotopy, founded in the realm of poetry: the topos of Lipiu, a space that can be perceived as the birthplace of her personal vocabulary. It is equally, where the weeds of frustration, rage and deep sorrow grow, the failure of the unspoken words, a territory where she keeps all she has ever lost. The poet speaks up bringing forward the existential agony of bodies in precarity: how, where and through what channels do we become audible and visible? The embodied articulation of a public voice and the overall physical effort to create a sound that can be heard become an everlasting struggle. Subjects lacking recognition by dominant discourse in the full spectrum of their existence are now forced to invent an original code that will communicate their multiplicity: a thoroughly new language, capable of translating into letters and syllables every single atom of their living experience. In Lipiu project, female artists and collectives are invited to compose the letters and the sounds of a personal yet common language in which female experience will emerge as a collective and poetic voice in public space. From the interior of A-Dash space to the unexpected and exposed points along the street of Asklipiou, artworks coexist with and incorporate archive material of feminist publications from the 70’s in an attempt to trace female emotional experience from within and towards the public and vice versa.

During the show, a public program will be held on the A-Dash official website (http://a-dash.space).

The exhibition is realised under the auspices and with the support of the Greek Ministry of Culture and Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).

Participating artists: Zoe Chatziyannaki, Anthie Daoutaki, Eva Isleifs and Rakel McMahon, Irini Karayanopoulou, Maria Loizidou (Desmos Gallery collection), Malvina Panagiotidi, Nina Papakonstantinou, Nana Sachini, This is not a feminist project

Curator: Christina Petkopoulou

Anthie Daoutaki is SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2019 in visual arts, Malvina Panagiotidi is a visual arts Fellow 2018 and Mare Spanoudaki, member of the team This is not a feminist project, is a curatorial Fellow 2019.

Christina Petkopoulou, curator of the project, is 2019 Fellow in curating.