RADIUM PALACE
Please tell us a bit about yourself and how you are defining your work? Or in other words, if you needed to explain what you do to someone “outside” the art world, what is the essence it comes down to in your oeuvre and why?
Defining who I am or my work is not easy. I’m a graphic designer and a gastronome. Who am I? This is the ultimate question. The essence of my work is to make people try to answer the same question, but to answer that, you have to understand from which point of view you will do it.
In my work for the exhibition RADIUM PALACE I did exactly this, I asked the viewer to answer the question Who am I? by listing some ingredients that stereotypically “define” a given culinary culture.
The interesting thing is that the stereotypes behind those ingredients are so widespread that most people answer the question by defining the “correct” country of those ingredients, thus defining a culture, defining a person.
Who am I? From which point of view?
Dracula
Mandi
Hot chili peppers
InDesign
Natural wine
Who am I? Who are you?
Image: Bianca Otilia Ghiuzan
How do you personally define “wellness”, but also in terms of the collective?
I see wellness as a temporary state where body, mind, emotions are in harmony in the individual but also with the collective.
I think you can’t really separate the individual state of wellness from the collective, unless you detach yourself from the collective.
I see wellness as a form that changes state in contact with the collective, as a temporary state in perpetual exchange.
If we talk about today’s artists creating and contributing healing spaces and works that can transform society and restricted mind sets…how can they reach the collective that is not aware of being a collective?
It seems a bit difficult to make a separation and categorize people as educated or anything like that.
I think this is a complex and gigantic issue that includes economic and cultural discourses.
But basically, I don’t think it is the artists who have to act alone to reach this sort of “unconscious collectivity”.
I think there is a need for a wider consideration and distribution of funds to exhibition spaces that act outside of large urban contexts, so that we reach those who usually do not have ways of being exposed to art on a daily basis.
Can you share how spending time and exhibiting on site on the island of Lesvos influenced you? (Mentally, physically, emotions, sensations.)?
Visit Lesvos and you will understand.
Which work or approach of your fellow artists in this exhibition inspired you especially and why?
This one feels like a very tough question since I met so many great people that participated in their own way, not only artists.
Photoharrie made everyone move, dance, jump with his musical performance, Angelos Papadopoulos catalyzed us, immobilized us with his movements, Lydia Dambassina told us a Family Story, while Georgia Kotrestsos asked ‘Are we what we drink?’ serving us Scotch on the Holy Rocks and these are just some of the artists who inspired me with their stories.
Image: Photoharrie at RADIUM PALACE
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“RADIUM PALACE” Finissage: March 6, 2022 in Agia Paraskevi, Lesvos
K-Gold Temporary Gallery in co-organisation with the North Aegean Region curated by Nicolas Vamvouklis
