Eugenia Raskopoulos: With(out) voice
If there is something that is still worth remembering from the Classical period, it is that the ideals of civic life should be embodied in the poise and skin of its citizens. The structure of the city is often written on the body, and the body formed by the city. In the Hellenic polis the idealized relationship between city and body was represented through the figure of the kouros. However, the Classical celebration of the body has not endured well in history.
Barbarians have ransacked the temples and neophytes have perverted the ideals. What is left of the kouros after the Nazi's appropriation of the Classical body as a symbol of Aryan racial supremacy? Where is the civic virtue of healthy and well sculpted bodies locked in the agona of the Olympic Games when it is 'always' Coca Cola which is sponsoring the 'real thing'? The cult of purity and permanence which is central to the classical conception of beauty is revisited in Eugenia Raskopoulos's recent exhibition, with(out) voice.
This exhibition brings together two themes which are central to Raskopoulos 's practice: the significance of Greekness, and the measure of a migrant's life. lt is based on a series of photographs taken in the National
Archaeological Museum in Athens, and video footage also taken in Greece. Parallel to this work are some very personal photographs of the artist's grandmother: a woman who fled her village in northern Greece during the civil war, finding refuge in the Communist state of Czechoslovakia, briefly returning to Greece, and then migrating to Australia.
The exhibition comprises ten large format black and white iris prints, all untitled, and a two minute video called Closing My