The concept of the Exhibition

The basic idea of the exhibition consists of presenting in public 84 artistic cushions from the “Is & Zhu Stathoyiannis collection” and highlighting the thematic dialoque developed between the digital artistic drawing by Ioannis Stathoyiannis (fabric printed) and the artworks of the visual artists participating in the exhibition.

The place of the Exhibition

It´s also worth noticing that experts and public are called to face a new challenge, since Ioannis Stathoyiannis´s exhibition hosted in one by definition non-museum use space, the Olympic Hotel. This situation highlights one of the groundbreaking trends of Postmodernism, and in particular, that which mentions signs-spaces of the wider urban environment as possible places of presentation cultural material, thus creating conditions of collective historical memory.

The Exhibition and the Artist

Memories, feelings and testimonies compose the identity of the ‘Is & Zhu Stathoyiannis pillows. The digital artistic drawing of Ioannis Stathoyiannis (fabric printed) escapes the decorative spirit of applied arts, or even the spirit of social census or distancing. The digital drawing of Stathoyiannis, endowed with an experiential. Symbolic and conceptual dimension, takes art to the level of concepts, ideas and even emotions that leave their material imprint on the fabric, used as a kind of canvas and a field of artistic expression.
Based on his personal interest in fabrics and textiles, his undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Design, Fine and Digital Arts) Universities of Central Lancashire & Wolver Hampton) guided by his memories and travel experiences in Europe, Asia, and America, thanks to his teaching experience in China (Raffles Education Corp. Singapore) and his depth knowledge of Chinese culture and mythology, Stathoyiannis “deals” in his artworks with concepts, such as Place, Presence, Being, Identity, Crisis by expressing his thoughts, and concerns for social issues such as racism, immigration,etc. In his digital drawing, nature plays a symbolic role. There are many references to the Cretan mythology symbols.

The Collaboration with the Artists

In the framework of Ioannis Stathoyiannis´s personal exhibition an open invitation was sent to artists desiring to participate, using the fabric as the basic material of their artworks. The artists were thus invited to a conceptual interaction and to a synergy of high emotional intensity with Stathoyiannis´s digital drawing. In this exhibition, the particularity of expression and the variety of genres have been sought, according to the common objective of composing and exhibiting an artistic universe in dialogue. Works of painting and sculpture, artistic installations and constructions, animated sketches, works that combine textiles, drawing printed on fabric, fashion design, art photography, and poems make up an artistic universe of 21 plus 8 artists in conversation, dividing to four different thematic units in the exhibition.

Written by Argyro Petraki (FORTH), photography and video by Theodoros Evdemon (FORTH)

The artist Eirini Linardaki creates artworks using a variety of textiles coming from many places throughout the world. Each of these pieces carries its own story and at the same time, reveals the history, the way of thinking and the experiences of people who used it, in simple words what we now call cultural heritage. Although, the interesting fact is that the cultural heritage is captured and presented as a form of art and entertainment, and is made accessible to everyone.

The team of  FORTH ( Xenophon, Nikos, and Ilia) had the opportunity to meet Eirini Linardaki on their flight to Paris in anticipation of the plenary meeting of Mingei Project, where due to the strikes that were going on at that time, they shared a cab and had the time to talk about her work. The artist informed them about the exhibition that she was commissioned to do in Heraklion, Greece, in continuation of her project in NYC and Paris. Afterwards, when the exhibition was installed, they visited it and had an interview with her. It is also worth mentioning that our team met the artist at her atelier, where in the framework of an interview, they had the opportunity to discuss about the way she creates her artworks, the source of her inspiration, and the importance of children’s participation in her projects.

The artist

Eirini Linardaki was born in Athens and studied art in France, where she lives for two decades. She lives and works in France, in the United States, and on the island of Crete. The artist deliberately creates happy images and colorful “bursts” of enjoyment and energy with children sharing their daily lives, since she thinks that childhood is the place from where all we come.

She created public art in New York, Paris, Athens and Heraklion and she was commissioned for several public art installations by the NYC Mayor’s office for climate change, the NYC Parks and the NYC DOT. Her public installations are currently on view in Heraklion, Athens, Newark, NJ, Queens, and Brooklyn, NY. She often works in collaboration with communities and schools to develop her installations. In her latest body of works she uses archival material and Wikileaks footage in order to incorporate conflict imagery in her discourse.

The inspiration of the artist’s project

Eirini Linardaki creates artworks using an innovative method mainly based on her childhood experience. When she was a child, she used to look at the patterns of the mosaic floor and see different shapes, such as pirate ships, battles, people and so on. The next time that she went back to the same place, she looked for the same objects but she couldn’t find them. Growing up, she left the house, but she still kept those memories of the shapes in the mosaic. Many people do exactly the same with the clouds, they observe them and can see different shapes that are not been seen by anyone else.

Eirini Linardaki, as an artist and an adult, tried to find a way to create a project that allows people to perceive who they are, which their cultural heritage is, where they come from, how they can see things, and that all these traits are interrelated. In 2019, in the framework of her project she did many workshops around the world and brought many different fabrics. Then, these colorful fabrics are cut and stuck, making magnetic shapes that will be used to create collages on large surfaces. The pieces of the fabrics come from different people and places throughout the world. Some of them originate from countries at war, such as Liberia in Africa and others from Crete, Japan, and so on. Each of these pieces carries its own story and captures the cultural heritage of a country presenting it as a form of art and entertainment.

Eirini Linardaki speaks about her art

This entire idea is based on the artist’s view that the things we see depend on where we come from and all of us come from our childhood. In that way, the project allows people to interact and change what they see, making their own artwork in the museum. Due to the fact that children perceive things differently than adults, every time they look at the project, they see different figures, like a rabbit running, a dinosaur and so on. Then, follows a discussion about what each of them sees. The topics are mainly inspired from pictures that represent physical phenomena like volcanic explosions, fires, clouds, sea waves, etc.

The artist speaks about the source of her inspiration. The video is also available with English subtitles

Other exhibitions of Eirini Linardaki

Eirini Linardaki has exhibited in Boijmans Museum, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Onassis Cultural Center, Athens, Greece; Salon de Montrouge, Paris; Fri-Art Kunsthalle, Fribourg, Switzerland; Natural History Museum, Geneva, Switzerland; Macedonian Contemporary Art Museum, Greece; Hamburg Kunsthaus, Germany, Rutgers University, New Jersey, Institut Français d’Athènes, Greece, Greek Consulate, New York, John Jay College for Criminal Justice, New York, etc.

Written by Argyro Petraki (FORTH), photography and video by Thodoris Evdaimon (FORTH)

References

Chinese silk has a history of five thousand years. The unique techniques used, the vivid colours and its fascinating history have all contributed to the fact that silk occupies a very significant chapter in the history of Chinese – but also global – culture.

From 20 September until 20 October 2019, the Piraeus Bank Group Cultural Foundation (PIOP) and the China National Silk Museum presented the exhibition “Tradition Meets Trend” at the Foundation’s Silk Museum in Soufli, Greece. The exhibition included modern clothes and accessories of silk from the collections of the China National Silk Museum.

The exhibition used silk apparel to recreate the charm of silk craftsmanship via four sections: embroidery, silk-screen printing, weaving, dyeing. Both tradition and modern design trends are applied to create objects – works of art that showcase the inexhaustible vitality of Chinese silk.

The exhibition highlighted the greatness of silk culture and functions as a bridge between the two civilisations, Chinese and Greek. An embroidered coat of red satin with flower and bird patterns, the qipao brocade, blue-dyed silk scarves and many other spectacular creations, offered visitors the opportunity to “travel” to distant China.

The exhibition, which was under the auspices of the Culture & Tourism Department of the province of Zhejiang and the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Greece, came under the framework of the co-operation agreement signed between PIOP and the China National Silk Museum in October 2017. In the same context, providing for cultural exchanges between the two entities, PIOP will lend artefacts from its collections to be displayed at the China National Silk Museum in 2020.

Written by PIOP

Man is constantly striving to seek beauty and incorporate it into his everyday life. Beauty is represented in works of art, ornaments and implements of daily use. This ongoing search for beauty is on show at “The Countless Aspects of Beauty” as of Wednesday June 18, 2019 at the Chios Mastic Museum in Greece, which will be the last stop of this touring exhibition.

Visitors will have the opportunity to admire fifty antiquities from the collections of the National Archaeological Museum, dating from prehistoric times to the Roman era. Several items, referring to some of the aspects of Beauty, are being exhibited for the first time.

A separate section, which however is not unrelated to the collection of antiquities, highlights the beauty of the women of Chios as seen through the eyes of travellers (16th-19th century), with exhibits and photographic material derived from the Historical and Ethnological Society of Greece / National Historical Museum and the Travelogues section of the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation, respectively. Also on display are the multiple properties and uses of the unique product mastic, which is one of Mingei’s pilots.

Exhibition on tour

The major exhibition “The Countless Aspects of Beauty” of the National Archaeological Museum (NAM), was designed in collaboration with the Piraeus Bank Group Cultural Foundation (PIOP) to tour its thematic museums. It has been presented since May 2018 in the venues of the National Archaeological Museum’s touring exhibitions, a smaller version with the same title, presenting antiquities from the top museum of the country. The exhibition was presented successively at the Museum of the Olive and Olive-Oil in Sparta, the Silversmithing Museum in Ioannina, and the Museum of Marble Crafts in Tinos; it was visited by approx. 46,000 people.

The selection of the ancient artefacts was based on the themes of the PIOP museums to which they travelled. Thus, in the Museum of the Olive and Olive-Oil the focus was on body-care items such as oils and perfumes, in the Silversmithing Museum on fine jewellery, and in the Museum of Marble Crafts on marble figurines representative of the Cycladic culture.

The touring exhibition “The Countless Aspects of Beauty” is part of the policy of the National Archaeological Museum to create, in Greece and beyond, parallel versions, linked thematically to its central touring exhibitions. The ultimate aim of the collaboration between the two entities is that these exhibitions will function as satellites of the top museum in Greece in the various regions of the country, offering to local communities the opportunity to examine at first hand fine artefacts of great historical value derived from the unique collections of the National Archaeological Museum. Another aim of this two-year collaboration (2018-2019) is to link the cultural imprint of modern times with that of the past, showcasing the vitality of Greek culture in all of its expressions across time.

The exhibition runs from June 19 to September 8, 2019 at the Chios Mastic Museum, Rachi site (Tepeki), Chios 821 02. 
Opening hours: Daily except Tuesdays, 10:00-18:00
Closed on July 22 (local fair) and August 15

With the kind support of the Chios Gum Mastic Growers Association. 

Written by PIOP