ARCAthens Virtual Residency November 2020

Elia Alba, born in Brooklyn 1962, is a multidisciplinary artist, who works in photography, video and sculpture. She received her Bachelor of Arts from Hunter College in 1994 and completed the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in 2001. She has exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Science Museum, London; Smithsonian Museum of Art, El Museo del Barrio, ITAU Cultural Institute, São Paulo; National Museum of Art, Reina Sofía, Madrid and the 10th Havana Biennial. She is a recipient of the Studio Museum in Harlem Artist-in Residence Program in 1999; Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, 2002 and Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant 2002 and 2008; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) Workspace Program, 2009, and Anonymous Was A Woman Award, 2019. Collections include the Smithsonian Museum of Art, El Museo del Barrio, Lowe Art Museum. Her book, Elia Alba, The Supper Club, critically acclaimed by The New York Times, brings together artists, scholars and performers of diasporic cultures, through photography, food and dialogue to examine race and culture in the United States. She is currently guest curator for El Museo del Barrio’s upcoming survey of contemporary Latinx art, ESTAMOS BIEN – LA TRIENAL 20/21 opening March 2021. www.eliaalba.net
“Born in the U.S. to parents who immigrated from the Dominican Republic, I have often found myself in-between these cultures, countries and identities. These different positions made me realize that people’s characteristics are not limited to their race or ethnic heritage but rather subject to change and modification through experiences. Through photograph, sculpture and video, my work has always been concerned with fluid identities and the collective community. My project, the Supper Club, brings together artists, scholars and performers of diverse diasporic cultures, through photography, food and dialogue to examine race and culture in the U.S. My recent sculptural work of hands, created through a photo-transfer process on fabric, reflect the personality and identity of each sitter through the lens of history or folklore and the narratives ascribed to their hands.”
Elia Alba

Born and raised in Athens, dividing her life between Greece and France, Maro Michalakakos became known through a substantial body of work in which figures and themes emerge in a state of tension. Woven of family memories and cultural references, her universe is more given to creations on the edge of dreams, filled with an apparent calm, intentionally positioned midway between reality and the imaginary dimension. She has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Greece, Europe, USA and Turkey and has repeatedly collaborated with important theatrical directors and Institutions for the creation of stage environments (National Theater, Athens and Epidaurus Festival, Onassis Stegi, Poreia Theater). Many of her works have been acquired by significant public and private collections (Fonds Nationale d’art Contemporain, Istanbul Modern, D.Daskalopoulos collection etc)
“I am exploring the relationship between life and death; the way in which awareness of the inevitability of the end, of individual finiteness but also of the collective cycle of life, resonates in the perception and ultimately, in the quality of human life. maromichalakakos.com
The perception we have of our finiteness changes with age. My work evolves in this same rhythm.
I use scalpels to shave velvet. I can see the end. I’m forced to stop by the weft of the fabric. I paint birds. Birds have the power to fly and scratch without guilt. Are these powers the conditions of freedom? The connection between scalpels and talons is evident.”
Maro Michalakakos

Eleni Riga is an independent curator and co-founder of the art & research platform hd.kepler. In 2019-2020, she worked at Adult & Academics Programs at the Museum of Modern Art in New York where where she conceived the public program on the intersection of ecology and feminism (Ecología y feminismo) inviting Inés Katzenstein, Director, Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Research Institute for the Study of Art from Latin America, and Curator of Latin American and the artist Regina José Galindo. Previously she worked as Director of Contemporary Art at Eleusis 2021 European Capital of Culture where she established the artist residency on installation art “Initiator” and as a curatorial assistant at documenta 14 in collaboration with Pierre Bal Blanc. She has collaborated with many institutions in Greece, France and Switzerland such as Kadist Art Foundation, Palais de Tokyo, Festival Antigel etc. Riga has curated the performances Axis Mundi (2020), Astrorythmes (2018) and Going where we come from (2018) and the exhibitions Attention is an Exercise: It’s about Sharing, Practising, Tending (2018), Fragiles Nets (2018), Remediate the Everyday (2015) among others. She holds a master in curatorial studies from Université Paris 1 Panthéon – Sorbonne and has previously studied Communication, Media and Culture at Panteion University in Athens. She is above all a woman, a daughter, a sister, a person from the South.
“In contrast to the increasingly popular theories of transcendence and liquidity, we still have a body and by assuming we have one, it means we have a voice and therefore an ability of resistance and resilience. My practice explores how neoliberal policies, oppressive regimes and societal norms of organising our societies and labor are inscribed on human, plant, animal and celestial bodies. I am interested in how these bodies multiple, unstable, transient, deflect fixed notions of violence and radically negotiate the structures of interpretation. I approach my exhibitions as an exercise of attention in the sense of proximity and care.”
Eleni Riga
AVR Synopsis – A Cross Cultural Dialogue Between the AVR Fellows
I Contain Multitudes
An Essay by Eleni Riga on AVR3
Being the first virtual curatorial fellow of ARCAthens feels like a first-born child: you take all the love and attention but you also have to be hard-working and responsible to set a good example. This metaphor is partially true because I am the older sister of a strong and courageous individual that went through many adversities so I see myself a lot in this role. There is also another element in sisterhood I regard with much respect: the equal and non-hierarchical sharing of knowledge and experience. This is how I see my meeting with the fellows Elia Alba and Maro Michalakakos and all the artists they generously shared the platform of ARCAthens with. Where I use the word ‘family’ embedded in my Greek DNA, Alba uses the word community: “I am the sum of my parts and my parts are my community” she said during the AVR3 Synopsis.
Food and home was our first week’s subject. One of the first links we established was the importance of food and its socio-cultural implications in our respective cultures. Many of these conversations were naturally linked with our origins, childhood, or our early years of adulthood. There are many important reasons this topic was inescapable: Alba’s emblematic long-term relational and portraiture project, The Supper Club, bringing together 50 contemporary artists of color from the United States to discuss their identity while sharing food. Michalakakos has herself ‘offered’ her body in the performative dinner Kiss me like you’ll never kiss me again (2015) and through the use of furniture evoking the domestic environment and the complexity of family relationships [Le poulet dominical (revisited), 2009]. Moreover, biographical elements such as Alba’s Dominican roots and Michalakakos’ origin from Mani in the South of Greece and childhood memories from Alba’s mother working in the garment industry while Michalakakos’ dad was running an antique shop have shaped their practices.
But this rather safe topic of conversation became so much more when Alba posted her video ‘Eat’ (2003) where we watched a black man trying to eat a whole boiled egg looking like a head. This work is inspired by the Manifesto of Antropofagy by the modernist writer and poet Oswald de Andrade commenting on how Brazilian intellectuals could appropriate western culture for their own sake and ultimately dominate the “dominant” by ingesting the difference. According to Viveiros de Castro, through the act of anthropophagy ‘what was eaten was the enemy’s relation to those who consumed him, in other words, his condition as enemy’.
Alba was extending the conversation that was initiated with the artwork mentioned before, Kiss me like you’ll never kiss me again where Michalakakos cast herself and with the help of the pastry chef Parliaros decorated it with koliva, a wheat-based dish we offer in Greece for the commemoration of the dead. The artist herself cut the belly’ almost like in a Caesarean section and offered the koliva kept inside. Her body was devoured by the art lovers in an act of symbolic cannibalism with religious and pictorial connotations of The Last Supper expressing the artists’ recurrent themes of life and death. And, of course, what happens in between. Love.
The body serves as an architecture for both Alba’s and Michalakakos’ practices. Architecture allows us to manifest new worlds. In the second week of the residency, Alba introduced the work “Twins and Queens” (2005-2006) belonging to a series of photos where she combines sewing and photographs to make masks. She combines different elements from different races and cultures to create new bodies, bodies that exist ‘in between’ containing multitudes. As a response Michalakakos’ proposes hybrid bodies: between human and animal and intensifying an atmosphere of ambiguity [L’anatomie de la liberté (detail), 2020].
Their vision has no ambiguity though: they refer to worlds that are inclusive, multiple, transient with a continuum between all forms of life. The transition from the second week to the third where we examined myths and myth-making processes was so organic, flowing like a river as the work Reef and Hold (Danu) emphasizes: “Danu’s lack of a definitive mythos suggests she was an ancient goddess and her name belonged to any number of individuals, races or things dealing with water” mentioned Alba.
Moreover, Alba has been working on doll sculptures since 2011. Their prepubic hybrid bodies are not identifying with one sex or race resisting to categorization and integrating elements from reality and fiction ( Jelani Golden Feather, 2018). Michalakakos builds on pre-existent and new myths such as Prometheus’ punishment (Guilt, 2017) and the extremities of vultures [ Head over heels #2 (Narcissus), 2017] such as beaks and claws to explore the feeling of guilt that is often associated with the experience of people identifying as women. Myths, after all, are ways humans have invented to cope with and overcome their struggles.
The residency came to end with the topic ‘liquid’ signifying the fluidity of experiences we have lived and shared. There is such a gentle and suggestive approach to fundamental socio-political and biopolitical issues and existential questions by both of the artists. While they share strong approaches, for example Alba’s ‘acts of resistance’ against racial and cultural binaries and Michalakakos’ persistent labor on velvet working on women’s conditions and existentiality, they also leave so much space for reception, interpretation and reflection. As the feminist studies scholar Christine Downing said “there is space within sisterhood for likeness and difference, for the subtle differences that challenge and delight; there is space for disappointment-and surprise”.
For me an experience of sisterhood is an experience of being present, being whole while containing multitudes.
Eleni Riga
Instagram Visual Conversation
Week 1: Food and Home

#instagramtakeover #ArcAthens me, Elia Alba with fellow artist Maro Michalajakos as part of our virtual residency for the next 4 weeks. Follow us as we explore themes in our practices. This week the theme will be #homeandfood 📸Supper Club dinner October 2012


A conventional family meal,with the roast chicken as the main “character”! This installation stages an inevitable bourgeois family reunion,to question filial and carnal love.
Post by Elia Alba
This act of anthropophagy, of man eating man, has significant roots in the history of modern art. In Brazil in 1928, the writer Oswald de Andrade (1890-1954) penned the influential “Anthropophagite Manifesto”
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a text that urged Brazilian artists to take what they had learned from their European teachers and ingest it to then subvert these teachings in the service of creating a new national art. In this work, the performance artist, Clifford Owens, attempts to eat a small white head, yet he finds it impossible to do so. The impossibility of ingesting the head suggests the difficulties represented by race relations in contemporary society, and it is a metaphor for the power relations formed in the wake of the consumption of culture that crosses racial and ethnic boundaries. While dominant cultures benefit from ingesting other cultures and ideas, the reverse doesn’t hold true. I wanted to consider the power dynamics involved in the acts of consumption and appropriation
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Eat, 2003, super-8 video, concept and filmed by @asahinyc performed by @clifford_vo
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Day 2 – #AVR3 #postedbyEliaAlba #foodandhome #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #eliaalba #foodandart #anthropophagy #videoart #maromichalakakos #eleniriga @asahinyc @maromichalakakos @eleniriga 🦄🦄🦄

Kiss me like you’ll never kiss me again, 2015. Benefit dinner to support the @stateofconceptathens and @3_137_artist_run_space activities. Immersive performance celebrating the relation between life and death.

Lucia Hierro is Dominican-American artist based in the Bronx. Her sculptures are an ode to the specificity of growing up in Washington Heights,
a predominantly Dominican neighborhood that sits above West Harlem. Her work is an unabashed analysis of personal narratives, family and culture🇩🇴💙❤️🤍
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“Torrejitas de Yuca” (2019). Digital Print on Brush Suede, Cotton, Fleece, Foam. Dimensions 22 x 22 x 2 in.
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Day 3 #AVR3 #postedbyEliaAlba #foodandhome #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #eliaalba #foodandart #luciahierro #maromichalakakos #eleniriga @asahinyc @maromichalakakos @eleniriga 🦄🦄🦄
Post by Maro Michalakakos
Day 3 “80 vibrating carrots”, 2014 by @marilena_aligizaki. The installatiin addresses the concept of eugenics and asexuality, through the creation of a modern virtual garden of senses.

As part of my visual residency on @arc_athens I present a photograph from my photo installation “Tourists and Urbanites” (2005). In these photographs I depict a family of masked individuals traveling through New York, Mexico & Chile. The masks are created through a photo-transfer process.
I photographed the “family” like a tourist, using a point and shoot camera and depicting them in rather mundane poses. The individuals perform a mix of identities, genders and races and appear to grant themselves a position of certainty yet portray a world of contradictions and ambiguity.
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Day 4 –#AVR3 #postedbyEliaAlba #foodandhome #family #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #eliaalba #foodandart #maromichalakakos #eleniriga @maromichalakakos @eleniriga @asahinyc🦄🦄🦄

“My Fantasy bed”, 2002.
Inspired by “Peau d’Ane”, a French literary fairytale written in verse by Charles Perrault.
A tale about patriarchy, psychological incest and female emancipation.

Horace Pippin (1888-1946) was a self-taught American artist who painted a range of themes, including scenes inspired by his service in World War I, landscapes, portraits, and biblical subjects. Some of his best-known works address the U.S.’s history of slavery and racial segregation.
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In this painting titled “Domino Players”, depicts a domestic scene, in which three individuals are playing dominoes while another looks on. The one at the right may represent his mother, Christine, wearing a polka-dotted blouse, while a woman who may be Pippin’s grandmother smokes her pipe and observes the game. The boy, perhaps Pippin himself or his younger brother, John, appears lost in contemplation and he is placed protectively between two strong black women. The work is held by the Phillips Collection, Washington DC Day 5 – as part of my visual residency on @arc_athens – #AVR3 #postedbyEliaAlba #foodandhome #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #eliaalba #foodandart #lhoracepippin #blackart #dominos @maromichalakakos @elenrica @asahinyc 🦄🦄🦄

“Family affairs” 2005, @dimitris_tsoumplekas
In his photographs, videos and installations the greek artist employs the language of fable and fairytale to narrate allegorical tales of family life.
#postedbymaromichalakakos #foodandhome #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #maromichalakakos #eliaalba #elenrica #AVR3
AVR3 Curatorial Reflection #1
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Join curator @elenrica Eleni Riga on Instagram Live every Saturday at 11am EST for the duration of AVR3. Eleni will reflect on @maromichalakakos Maro Michalakaos and @asahinyc Elia Alba’s visual conversation from the past week. #foodandhome #AAVirtualResidency #instagramtakeover #instagramtv #live #contemporarycurator #curatorial #reflection #maromichalakakos #eliaalba #elenrica #AVR3
Week 2: Body and Fragments

This photograph is part of the series “Twins and Queens” (2005-2006). Through a photo-transfer process on fabric, I created mask of female friends for other individuals to wear.
The mask individuals are then re-photographed with wigs and other props, and contextualized in different environments and settings. You can say that the masks are photographs looking back at the viewer from within another photograph; a double illusion twice removed. These masks function as both substitute heads and portraits that present individuals that are dramatic in their strangeness. Here twins are sitting on a park bench and both have red hair; one has curly hair while the other an afro. The one with curly hair is in foreground and in focus, while the one with the afro is in the background, out of focus. The image is a critique on racial ambiguity and a collapse of our perceptions and ideals.
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Slide (Tourists and Queens), 2006, c-print, 30″x30″
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Day 6 – as part of my visual residency on @arc_athens – #AVR3 #postedbyEliaAlba #bodyandfragments #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #eliaalba #maromichalakakos #eleniriga #twins #photography @maromichalakakos @elenrica @asahinyc 🦄🦄🦄

I spent most of my childhood in my parents’ antique shop, my personal Ali Baba’s cave. I used to accompany my father when he visited apartments for appraisals and purchases of furniture, paintings etc.
Most of the time the owners had passed away and their children had to vacate the houses.
I was dreaming of stories about all these objects and their owners, secretly becoming part of their families.
Some years later, I started “surgically” shaving velvet in an attempt to revive those lives. #postedbymaromichalakakos #bodyandfragments #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #maromichalakakos #eliaalba #asahinyc #elenrica #AVR3 #Velvet @asahinyc @elenrica @the_fabulous_group_ @chris_fabulous @casadellarte @zoomusic

Utilizing illustrations from the book Across Africa (1877) by British explorer, Verney Lovett Cameron, the figures, painted like specters and hieroglyphics, appear to dance and march. They serve as reminders of the past and of a transformative future.
Ghosting, Imprint and D, 2020
Photo transfers on fabric, acrylic, zipper, polyester-fill and wire, 15” x 3” x 7”
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Thank you @downtowntropico 💚
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Day 7 – as part of my visual residency on @arc_athens #AVR3 #postedbyEliaAlba #bodyandfragments #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #eliaalba #hands #photography @maromichalakakos @elenrica @asahinyc 🦄🦄🦄

“Anatomie de la liberté” (detail), 2020, porcelain
Hybrid sculptures, half human half animal foretelling the dystopia that will be the world of our near future. #postedbymaromichalakakos

Abigail DeVille’s work are archaeological constructs that reference canonical sculptures, contemporary social issues, and the movement of solar bodies. 🪐✨🌍🌙💫🌓
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Untitled (Til, Martin, Garner & Brown) 2015
mixed media, dimensions variable
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Day 8 – as part of my visual residency on @arc_athens – #AVR3 #postedbyEliaAlba #bodyandfragments #solar #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #eliaalba #abigaildeville @maromichalakakos @elenrica @asahinyc 🦄🦄🦄

“Miss Sparkle” (Serquet’s waking), 2017, sculptural installation by @nanasachini, book by Iordanis Papadopoulos @daily_lazy projects, curated by @margarita.bofiliou
A huge creature-hybrid of doll and insect combining elements from Egyptian mythology and pop culture. Innocence and perversion, childhood traumas, sexuality, gender issues are boldly examined. #postedbymaromichalakakos #bodyandfragments #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #maromichalakakos #eliaalba #asahinyc #eleniriga #AVR3 #nanasachini #dailylazyprojects #margaritabofiliou #iordanispapadopoulos
Post by Elia Alba
Giving thanks for friends and family and a reminder to stay positive 🧡🖤🤎
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#repost @letithappen
Enjoy your 24h with love, peace and gratitude….. Have a good day
Song: Good Day – Nappy Roots @nappyroots #goodday #nappyroots #norahyarahrosa #letithappen
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Day 9 – @arc_athens – #AVR3 #goodday #staypositive #postedbyEliaAlba #bodyandfragments #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover @maromichalakakos @elenrica @asahinyc
Post by Maro Michalakakos

Reef and Hold (Danu), 2013, archival pigment print, 20” x 28”
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This photograph is part of the series titled “Danu. Utilizing self-portrait dolls made through a photo-transfer process, the dolls are photograph in Tankah Bay in Mexico on top of Mesoamerican coral reef, which is exposed during low tides. The roots of the name Danu remain a matter of some debate among etymologists.
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Day 10 – @arc_athens – #AVR3 #postedbyEliaAlba #bodyandfragments #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #eliaalba #dolls #hybridity #danu @maromichalakakos @elenrica @asahinyc


“Eleni”, 2015, red velvet, 650x200x60cm
Commission by @neongreece for the “Renaissance stories” group show.
Curated by #dimitrispaleokrassas
Photo by @nikosmarkou59
The nude torso of a woman viewed from the back, sprouts abstracted limbs that exacerbate the desperate clawing action of a fantastical half-human half-animal beast writhing in agony. Will this fragmented psyche achieve catharsis?
#postedbymaromichalakakos #bodyandfragments #InstagramTakeover #maromichalakakos #eliaalba #elenrica #AVR3 #georgeseferis
AVR3 Curatorial Reflection #2
Join curator @elenrica Eleni Riga on Instagram Live every Saturday at 11am EST for the duration of AVR3. Eleni will reflect on @maromichalakakos Maro Michalakaos and @asahinyc Elia Alba’s visual conversation from the past week. This Saturday we had the pleasure to host @maromichalakakos and talk about her practice and the second week of #AVR3.
#maromichalakakos #eliaalba #eleniriga @asahinyc @maromichalakakos @elenrica #bodyandfragments #curatorialreflection
Week 3: Mythologies

Photographed on Islamorada in the Florida Keys, these young brown-skinned girls wear a mask (made through a photo transfer on fabric) of a white woman and occupy a landscape
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that the western gaze would deem tropical and exotic, stereotyping its inhabitants as sensuous and untamed. Yet, the pale faces against the brown bodies creates a disconnect that interrupts this narrative Day 11 – @arc_athens – #AVR3 #postedbyEliaAlba #mythologies #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #eliaalba #hybridity #pixies @maromichalakakos @elenrica @asahinyc
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Pixies (Dark Waters), 2008
c-print, 30”x30
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“Variations carmin”, 2016, velvet
Installation view from the show #matieresarever, Centre d’art contemporain du château des Adhémar, Montélimar, France
…The fabric works stand in front of the castle’s windows, the light filters in through their carved parts and images become visible only in daylight. It is easy for one to ask “what is it that blinds the sight, or what the eyes see in a state of blindness” (Jacques Lacan)…
Text by @pina_ars #postedbymaromichalakakos #mythologies #InstagramTakeover #maromichalakakos #eliaalba #elenrica #AVR3 #helenelallier #chateaudesadhemar #isabelle_chapuis #nevgallery #barbarapolla #velvet @the_fabulous_group_ @chris_fabulous

Made through a photo transfer process on fabric, I create self-portrait dolls with webbed feet and hands. The dolls draw from Caribbean and African mythologies, popular culture, fashion and science fiction.
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At first glance, the dolls appear precious yet their gender is fluid as their bearded faces and androgynous alien-like body imply. Some are unique, as the one shown here, others are developed in groups, all will become part of a larger installation that will present a mythical futuristic world of “alien people” that examine gender, race and global diasporic histories. 🌍 ✨💫
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Jelani Gold Feather, 2018
silk screen transfers on fabric, fabric paint, synthetic hair, loop fringe and feathers, doll is 24” in height
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Day 12 – @arc_athens – #AVR3 #postedbyEliaAlba #mythologies #omovalley #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #eliaalba #otherbodies @maromichalakakos @elenrica @asahinyc


Head over heels #2 (Narcissus)
2017, watercolor on paper and gilded frame, 200x260cm
…On one wall of her studio stood a work in progress, another of her birds, a vulture this time, but doubled, like in a mirror, like Narcissus. There are two vultures, in fact, connected, one drowning in another, spiritually…

The feminine-archetypal ciguapa is a trickster from Dominican folklore who appears in many of artist Firelei Báez’s work. The ciguapa is the product of the artist’s embrace of the usually maligned “Lilith-like wild women from the forest,” draped with hair to their backwards pointing feet, who filled the stories of her childhood. They serve as a critique of institutions that reinforce and contribute to projects of empire.
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With this figure Firelei gives us something to grapple with when considering concepts of race-making and their relationship to land and living organisms. The ciguapa continues the symbolic work of elaborating dominicanidad in all its dimensions🌓🌴
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Ciguapa Pantera (to all the goods and pleasures of this world), 2015
Drawing, 40” x 70” 🌗🌴
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Day 13 – @arc_athens – #AVR3 #postedbyEliaAlba #mythologies #ciguapa #domincanidad #avatar #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #eliaalba #otherbodies #fireleibaez @maromichalakakos @elenrica @asahinyc


“Goat Song”, 2019, sculpture (oxidized metal, thread, wood, acrylic) by @kostisvelonis for the second episode of @ahollowplace in collaboration with @yellowbrick_studio.
This unique project, curated by @christian_oxenius and #nikolasventourakis, invites four internationally acclaimed artists to inhabit, with a site-specific and original project, the space of a natural cave in the centre of Athens for one day.
Kostis Velonis is a Greek artist known for exploring the dystopia of unrealized Modernist and avant- garde projects. His sculptures, paintings, and large-scale installations are best characterized as craft- based compositions that construct allegories from the complex relations of history, class, identity, and the conflicts of the human soul. #postedbymaromichalakakos
#mythologies #InstagramTakeover #maromichalakakos #eliaalba #elenrica #AVR3 #kostisvelonis #nurseriesoftheunconscious
#yellowbrick #ahollowplace #outset
Image Courtesy of the artist

In Arabian myth, genies were created by God from fire, many years before humans were created. This is talked about in the Koran and even before the Koran was written, there is evidence that people worshiped genies. They were a lot like humans, except with magical powers.
The wishing part came from the book “One thousand and One Nights” in which the story of “Aladdin and the Wondrous Lamp” has a genie that grants Aladdin’s every wish (not limited to 3). There are many narratives in other cultures in which a magical creature is wished upon 3 times. 🌓💫
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Three Wishes is an ongoing project I started in 2009. I created 100 small tulle bags that contain three half-inch doll heads with my image. The bags are meant to be gifted to people. It could be for a birthday, congratulations or just because. The request to the receiver is to let me know when they have made their wishes. I keep a list of who and why I gifted the bag as well as if they responded to my request. Thus far I have given out 30. 💫💫💫
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Three Wishes, 2009-ongoing
Photo transfer on fabric, tulle, ribbon, polyfill, thread; bag 3″x4″; each head 0.5″🌗💫
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Day 14 – @arc_athens – #AVR3 #postedbyEliaAlba #mythologies #threewishes #arabianmythology #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #eliaalba @maromichalakakos @elenrica @asahinyc

“Guilt”
2017, black velvet, 310 x 100 x 80 cm
Photo by #rıdvanbayrakoğlu Prometheus was the Titan god of forethought and crafty counsel who was given the task of moulding mankind out of clay.
His attempts to better the lives of his creation brought him into conflict with Zeus. Firstly he tricked the gods out of the best portion of the sacrificial feast, acquiring the meat for the feasting of man. Then, when Zeus withheld fire, he stole it from the workshop of Hephaestus, the god of fire and patron of artisans and craftsmen, and delivered it to humankind hidden inside a fennel-stalk.
As punishment, Zeus had Prometheus chained onto a rock on Mount Caucasus for eternity, and put him to relentless torture by having a vicious eagle feed on his liver. The liver would grow up again at night, so that the eagle could happily eat it again the next day. #postedbymaromichalakakos
#mythologies #InstagramTakeover #maromichalakakos #eliaalba #elenrica #AVR3 #galerinev_istanbul #barbarapolla #velvet #shavingvelvet @the_fabulous_group_ @chris_fabulous


In the realm of myth and pop culture, the audience often sees characters with ordinary and mundane items.
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As the story grows these objects take on a “magical” quality. A good example of an ordinary item is shoes. The importance of shoes can be found in myths, fairytale, folklore, and superstitions throughout history and around the world. Our shoes represent how we belong to ourselves. ✨
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After I became pregnant I began to see a connection between motherhood and labor. The installation “Red Shoes” is informed by my mother who had worked in the garment industry. Although both men and women inhabit these spaces, it is really women, often mothers, who form the majority of this labor force. This installation was created from 2000 pairs of small shoes I made by sewing small bags out of muslin, which were dyed and hardened with pigment and acrylic. At a close inspection, the shoes can look like elf shoes, baby booties, or fairy slippers, yet from a distance they can look like a bed of flowers. Also, the character of the shoes alludes to the illusions created by the fashion industry that hides its unethical labor practices behind a façade of fantasy. Further, the shoes connote a form of women’s work, that of traditional knitting and sewing baby booties. While the representation of shoes in art has often functioned as a stand-in for the intended subject, here the representation of the subject is twice removed. While the shoes are playful, they are symbolic – not representative of the babies who might fill them, but for the mothers and laborers who manufacture them 🌹🌓
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Red Shoes, 1999
muslin, pigment, acrylic, thread, dimension variable
composed of 2000 pairs of shoes; each shoe 3″ to 5″ in length🌹🌗
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Day 15 – @arc_athens – #AVR3 #postedbyEliaAlba #mythologies #redshoes #fairytale #fashion #labor #shoesinar #motherhood #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #eliaalba @maromichalakakos @elenrica @asahinyc


“Treasures”, 2015, site-specific installation by @silvinadermeguerditchian for the 52 Venice Biennial.
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(….) In the beautiful cases filled with a Wunderkammer of treasures collected by or given to the monks – glass bottles, Etruscan figures, Chinese teacups – Silvina Der-Merguerditchian installed her own “Treasures.” The installation builds on an astounding object she inherited from her maternal great-grandmother Hripsime, a hand-written notebook of 350 folk health remedies, written in Armenian script in Turkish language. Hripsime, a genocide survivor who immigrated to Argentina with her son, Silvina’s grandfather, wrote the book in Córdoba in 1943. The installation consists of the 130pp. archival notebook itself, and of objects that are building on the archive – the ingredients of these recipes, Anatolian plants, small sacks full of seeds and other healing substances, as well as the chemical formulas by which they might be assembled and do the work of healing. Photographs of Hripsime and her family are there, amidst images of well-known Armenian doctors and healers. The artist relates her great-grandmother’s recipes to medical manuscripts and encyclopedias dating back as far as the Middle Ages, pharmacology textbooks, and other manuscripts from San Lazzaro’s impressive archives “putting her … back into the line of History, into the tradition of healers from Cilicia.” (…) (Fragment of text by Prof. Marianne Hirsch, Columbia University)
#postedbymaromichalakakos #mythologies #InstagramTakeover #maromichalakakos #eliaalba #elenrica #AVR3 #silvinadermeguerditchian #venicebiennale2015 #kalfayangalleries #motherisaverb #familytreasures #familyrecipies #notebook
AVR3 Curatorial Reflection #3
Join curator @elenrica Eleni Riga on Instagram Live every Saturday at 11am EST for the duration of AVR3. Eleni will reflect on @maromichalakakos Maro Michalakaos and @asahinyc Elia Alba’s visual conversation from the past week. This Saturday we had the pleasure to host @asahinyc and talk about her practice and the third week of #AVR3.
#eliaalba #maromichalakakos #eleniriga
@asahinyc @maromichalakakos @elenrica #mythologies #curatorialreflection
Week 4: Liquidities
Post by Elia Alba
[Sound on]In the video the doll heads are lying in a shallow pool of water. I present the idea of breathing as symbolically empowering and the idea of blowing as symbolically having the capability to change the course of things.
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Yet the faces are static and the breathing patterns contradict those statements. 💨💦🌓
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Breathe Blow, 2002, Video, 2:22 minutes
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Day 16 – @arc_athens – #AVR3 #postedbyEliaAlba #liquidities #dollheads #blackbodies #eliaalba #videoart #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover @maromichalakakos @elenrica @asahinyc

“Parallel universe”, 2010 watercolor 50x70cm
Oxygen is found in the atmosphere and in water. Water creatures need to filter the oxygen out of the water and then discard the water so that don’t drown.
The oxygen requirements of octopus are greater than those required by other mollusks and fish. Octapuses have three hearts…two of which pump blood across the two gills, where oxygen exchange takes place. #postedbymaromichalakakos
#liquid #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #maromichalakakos #eliaalba #elenrica #AVR3 #sea #nature #Breathing #paralleluniverse
Post by Elia Alba
Titled Revelations (2002), this video clip is part of an interview I did with a Dominican woman and her response to 9/11. The use of “it was like a revelation” was her response to a recurring dream she had prior to the attacks. Yet her responses were like “revelations;” because her answers were very intertwined with her own reality, experiences and perceptions.
She was a practitioner of Santeria and offered “spells” with elements of water for protection of me and my child who was 4 years old at that time. Santeria (Way of the Saints) is an Afro-Caribbean religion based on Yoruba beliefs and traditions, with some Roman Catholic elements added. It is a syncretic religion that grew out of the slave trade in Cuba. Water is an integral part of the practice.
🌓💦✨
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Day 17 – @arc_athens – #AVR3 #postedbyEliaAlba #liquid #water #revelations #santeria #afrocaribbean #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #eliaalba @maromichalakakos @elenrica @asahinyc



“Exit Liquid”, 2009, site-specific installation for the second edition of #ReMapKM.
Photos by #panoskokkinias, #fanisvlastaras & Revecca Konstantopoulou
Initially launched in 2007, Remap is a multifaceted biennial art initiative running at the Kerameikos/Metaxourgeio (KM) downtown district of Athens, which brings together artists, curators, institutions and galleries from across the world. Through ephemeral art interventions, platforms and installations, the project’s intension is to open up different possibilities for linking the tangible world of buildings, streets and urban landscapes with contemporary art practices, social networks and modes of communication.
For this particular project, I was given an entire vacant floor of an abandoned building, from where even the radiators had been removed. This detail was so intense that it gave me the idea to revitalize the space by using once again the old radiators – and many others that I found thrown away in the area. So, I decided to connect them all together with pipes and knots and place them in the different rooms in memory of its former inhabitants.
The title of the installation was inspired by “Exit Ghost”, a novel by Philip Roth (2007). #postedbymaromichalakakos #liquid #InstagramTakeover #maromichalakakos #eliaalba #elenrica #AVR3 #ileana_tounta_gallery #artinstallation #untietheknot #radiators #exitliquid #exitghost #philiproth

Waterpod, by Mary Mattingly was a floating, sculptural, eco-habitat designed for the rising tides. It launched in the summer of 2009, navigated down the East River,
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explored the waters of New York Harbor, and docked at several Manhattan piers on the Hudson River before continuing onward. The Waterpod demonstrated future pathways for water -based innovations as a sustainable, navigable living space and showcased the critical importance of the environment and art, serving as a model for new living, d.i.y. technologies, art, and dialogue. 💦🌍🌎🌓✨
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Day 18 – @arc_athens – #AVR3 #postedbyEliaAlba #liquid #water #waterpod #environment #nomad #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #eliaalba @maromichalakakos @elenrica @asahinyc

Water is Attracted to Water, hybrid performance, combining non-fictional theater, dance and music by @kateroseadams
Photo by @_niaevgenia_
A playful celebration of the human relationship with water, but also recognition of our grief for what we are losing in the context of the climate emergency. The show stages a semi-fictiomalized Water Day, in which each performer brings a different voice, forming a hybrid of the figurative and the scientific -a fluid set of stories, dance, theater, songs, and drawing as celebration.
Writer and director @kateroseadams
Choreographer @mediemegas
Performers @kateroseadams @alexiabeziki @tom_le_cocq @scholzmiklas
Scientific consultant @scholzmiklas
Scenography @maromichalakakos
Lighting @adamlyon
#postedbymaromichalakakos #liquid #InstagramTakeover #maromichalakakos #eliaalba #elenrica #AVR3 #waterisattractedtowater @waterisattractedtowater
Post by Elia Alba
Multiplicities, 2001, Length 3:30 minutes💦
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In this video heads are floating in a contained body of water. From underneath the larger heads, a smaller head emerges. While the smaller head is viewed as breaking away from the group, it is what sustains it. 🌍💦💫




“L’Amore”,2004,mixed
media @ileana_tounta_gallery
Private collection
Photos by #fanisvlastaras &
Revecca Konstantopoulou
…A huge installation taking up the entire floor of an art gallery. Large pipes connecting a sink and toilets transplanted there run through the space, their path is enigmatic, just like the geography of the areas they connect. Something is definitely circulating, transitivity reigns but in which direction and to reach what – whom?…
Text by @paulardenne
For this project, I was inspired by Jean Cocteau’s play “The Human Voice” in which Anna Magnani, in the film version, gave a stunning performance – a woman talking on the phone with her lover learns that he is getting married the next day to someone else and that he is leaving her.
#postedbymaromichalakakos
#liquid #InstagramTakeover #maromichalakakos #eliaalba #elenrica #AVR3 #lamore #lavoixhumaine #jeancocteau #robertorosselini #annamagnani #cinemaitaliano #litteraturefrancaise #knots #untietheknot #uncanny #porcelain #artinstallation
Post by Elia Alba
Back to the “Danu”. Utilizing self-portrait dolls made through a photo-transfer process, this video clip was filmed at Tankah Bay, near Tulum, Mexico on top of Mesoamerican reef, which is exposed during low tides. The roots of the name Danu remain a matter of some debate. Some scholars have connected the name to the Danube River also point to other Indo-European languages where the word means “to flow” as well as names for different goddesses.
Also Danu may be a loanword from the ancient Scythian language, in which it meant “river.” Danu’s lack of a definitive mythos suggests she was an ancient goddess and her name belonged to any number of individuals, places or things dealing with water 💦💫🌓🌴🤍✨🌙
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Day 20 – @arc_athens – #AVR3 #postedbyEliaAlba #liquid #water #danu #environment #tulum #coralreef #mesoamericanreef #dolls #goddess #AAVirtualResidency #InstagramTakeover #eliaalba @maromichalakakos @elenrica @asahinyc


“Bouquet Final”, 2012, site-specific installation by @michelblazy
French artist Michel Blazy filled a 13th century Parisian monastery with showers of soapy foam.
Oozing from 4.5m of scaffolding, the thick white foam slowly drips to cover the ancient floor of the sacristy. A new performance begins every morning; at night, the foam is cleaned and the stage set for the next day.
The title refers to the possible future of our planet, and the work itself is concerned with Earth’s fragility in the face of overconsumption and general environmental disregard.
#postedbymaromichalakakos #liquid #InstagramTakeover #maromichalakakos #eliaalba #elenrica #AVR3 #michelblazy #artinstallation #foam #monastery #environment #climatechange #parisagreement
AVR3 Curatorial Reflection #4
Tune in to curator @elenrica Eleni Riga’s final Curatorial Reflection. Eleni reflects on @maromichalakakos Maro Michalakaos and @asahinyc Elia Alba’s visual conversation from the past week.
Join us for the AVR3 Synopsis this Saturday December 19 12PM EST on Zoom.
#eliaalba #maromichalakakos #eleniriga
@asahinyc @maromichalakakos @elenrica #liquidities #curatorialreflection