Embroidered Textual Scapes (2023)
Two years after "textual nets,” my new visual proposition has evolved into "embroidered textual spaces.” Always within the familiar field of printmaking, this new body of work tackles themes deeply intertwined with my ongoing artistic explorations. The impetus for introducing this new artistic perspective was being awarded first prize in the recent competition for the creation of an artistic gift for the House of Representatives.
This fresh collection revolves around the Mediterranean Sea theme while drawing from the intricate art of embroidery. Historically relegated to the confines of Handicrafts, embroidery emerges as an art form that embodies a predominantly female expression, encapsulating unspoken narratives. Within a societal framework entrenched in dominant patriarchal structures and profit-driven economies, this form of expression often remained muted—a silent, ornamental text. Through themes encompassing nature, environment, gender roles, female identity, and the visual language I speak best, I weave and thread my ecological concerns. Issues like climate change, war, and subsequent disruptions in the social fabric call for novel approaches that foster new connections and kinships, expanding the realm of coexistence.
My creative process encompasses both traditional printmaking techniques and experimental printing methods. The iterative process of reprinting gives rise to the inherent values of collectivity and community. The act of creating art becomes a slow, therapeutic experience, amalgamating differences and convergences. This union of hand, mind, and time embodies a magical, deeply internal process.
Deliberate and unhurried, the tactile and ritualistic nature of printing allows my hands to "think," creating a unique space where art and embroidered thoughts converge. Rooted in gendered processes and practices, these artworks weave tales—both ancient and contemporary. They ponder on ideas of kinship and symbiosis, embracing human and non-human entities alike. This prayer-like, symbolic process—both manual and spiritual—pushes the boundaries of imagination to reconstruct sanctuaries, reimagining safe spaces through a collective effort dedicated to preserving life and nature.
The artwork, resembling a fabric sack adorned with delicate embroidery and prints using humble, vulnerable materials, becomes a tapestry of interconnected thoughts. These wrapped bundles encapsulate the history of coexistence and communal experiences. Transforming into tangible entities, they become akin to rucksacks—vessels that gather and safeguard the memories of fragile life and notions of belonging. They construct a fresh network of relationships and encounters, a new economy. They extend the boundaries of thought, creating spaces for collaborative creation and inclusive frameworks. What I content in my practice is that care and the unveiling beauty in nature, is a political act and a form of social resistance.
In the well-chosen words of Donna Haraway in her foreword to Ursula Le Guin's book, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, “to salvage the unheroic stories that have yet to be heard. For a language that makes possible the reimagining and re-enchantment of the world around us.”
Textual Nets (2021)
This incredible need to believe…- Julia Kristeva
The corporealization of water and fluidity of the Mediterranean space. Inside the theme of the sea and the water element, I get carried away into an adventure to capture movement, liquidity, and transparency.
It is a fascinating journey of discovery of materials, within a myriad of hybrid forms of print, and an expansive visual language for the conveyance of concepts, ideas, and sensations.
In our current era, the Mediterranean serves as both a treacherous trap and a beacon of hope for those embarking on uncertain journeys. The repercussions of the environmental crisis are unevenly distributed, exacerbating global insecurity, social inequality, and environmental degradation.
Amidst the political fluidity and migratory currents of the Mediterranean, lies the quest for an essence that embodies its universal character and cultural interweaving. Caught in the grip of political and economic interests, individuals find themselves disempowered and vulnerable, struggling to assert their inherent human rights in the ever-changing landscape of multicultural societies. Urgency surrounds the need for a sustainable future that places human and ecological well-being at its core, embracing the idea of global human diversity and fluidity, while challenging traditional notions of identity.
Taking a naturalist and essentialist approach, this artistic endeavor delves into the vulnerability of ecosystems, both local and global, emphasizing the delicate balance between human life and the environment. It contemplates the protection of life itself and the sources from which it springs. Within the Mediterranean sea, we are all trapped, realizing the imperative need for a new economic paradigm. This study explores the intricate relationship between place and identity, within a space constantly in flux, where ideas find solace.
The artistic practice at hand embraces experimental and innovative printmaking techniques, combining them with traditional methods. Paper and ink acquire new dynamics, expressing the contemporary, controversial, and turbulent landscape of the Mediterranean. Otherness, fluidity, hybridity, and diversity become essential elements of a Mediterranean identity, requiring urgent preservation.
Through a visual exploration of the contemporary cultural tapestry, where immigration and "the other" cease to be seen as threats but rather as a call for compassion, the artist insists on the recognition of our shared humanity; on recognising oneself in the other, the foreign, the different. The project proposes the creation of a cohesive social fabric and a safety net, responding to the complexities of contemporary political and social events. It seeks sustainable approaches to caring for the Earth and its resources while emphasizing the significance of home and the environment.
Within a three-dimensional installation, incorporating sound and imagery, a familiar space emerges—an escape from reality. Fear is ritualistically exorcised, replaced by the assurance that care has the power to heal and soothe. Framed by love and admiration for nature, the artist asserts that the work of the hands signifies artistic expression and embodies empathic values. Symbolic processes, both manual and spiritual, intertwine, creating shelters and environments that serve as both traps and places of safety.
Against the backdrop of planetary fear of natural disasters, the project proposes care and hope as shields. Grounded in gender therapeutic processes, it maps the awe and fragility of life. It underscores the inherent need for the faith that predates religions, reflecting the divine within humanity. The therapeutic and ritualistic invocation of social ties transforms art into a vessel for transferring the need for hope.
Through an iterative process of reprinting, the project uncovers differences and convergences, expanding the space for frameworks of care and lifestyle management for both human and non-human organisms and environments.
Manual dialogues - Handmade Thoughts (2015)
Through a dialogue between artwork and craftwork, engraver/visual artist Evgenia Vasiloude explores issues of female identity. Selected embroideries from the collections of the Leventis Museum interact in an atmosphere of experimentation with a section of prints. Engravings, silk-screen prints, and handicrafts coexist in the same space.
Three-dimensional installations interactively evolve in the space, free from the customary prerequisite of identical and numbered copies that govern the art of Engraving. After all, modern engraving and prints have been in dialogue with other art forms for many years.
As content, the female identity of the exhibits of the Leventis Museum meets the contemporary reflection of a female creator and embodies personal dialogues and narratives. Thoughts and concerns of women of another era, sewn and embroidered into today.
They relay the female experience into artwork\embroidery and transform speech and thought into visual writing. Yet, there are innermost thoughts and private discourses inherent in embroidery intended to decorate and charm the most personal and familial spaces.
The invaluable contribution of previous generations and the word of our grandmothers, disguised as craftsmanship, meets and inspires the creative work of today's generations. They share and tell familiar stories, experiences, and memories. Their once powerless speech today expresses itself freely, without "disguises." Though perhaps it remains private and decorative.
The artist’s intention is to examine the place where artwork and craft meet, where what cannot be said can be embroidered or made into a work of art. The space in which the labor and the energy of hands that infuses the artwork transform into the creative experience.
While questioning the separation between work of art and handicraft, at the same time, the artist argues that, where the hand of the creator is absent in the artistic process of actual materialization of the work, the 'body' of the work often remains lifeless. Contrarily, the unspeakable takes shape through the precious energy of the hands.
The process of embodying the work of art is a healing/poetic process, where memory –collective or private– is expressed and transmuted. Simultaneously and similarly, the artist is exposed and becomes vulnerable through the artistic process.
At the same time, the artworks call for a reflection on art in this day and age. In the economy of art, a work of art is considered immortal, while a work of craft is mortal. This exhibition, in which unframed works of art made of vulnerable, perishable materials come into direct contact with the viewer, negates this perception.
Embroidered Texts-Naturescapes (2011)
Engraved texts create “natural written landscapes” in space. The written word becomes a continuation and product of nature. The pattern of written words is an image, a tissue; it is the form of verbal speech. The drawings of words, letters, texts constitute natural landscapes and an extension of nature itself. The text is deliberately rendered unreadable. The only thing remaining is the tissue of the text, the pattern, the embroidered text-landscape. The word, hidden within the embroidered written pattern, no longer composes the universally established hymn to Mother Nature or to the Goddess of Fertility.
The script-engraving/the engraving script has become my own personal medium of expression. It transports small everyday worries, memories, and desires. It is a mute, unreadable attempt to connect my present and past with a script-thread, and look ahead. Thus, the “body” of word becomes a natural landscape, relieved from signification and meanings. It speaks of everyday trivia, private memories and experiences.
Through the “body” of verbal speech I engrave the mute embroidered text, without any reference to formal hymns-myths, but using my own experience. A dialogue between nature and language begins. The wish is to restore the lost cohesion of nature and word, body, language. It is however a natural embroidered landscape mute and decorative handcraft! An allusion to the feminine word, which may now be uttered freely, but still remains powerless and decorative. But is the feminine word-work hopelessly destined to decorate the present? Or could it possibly be the engraved line-thread that embroiders patiently, so as to connect, today, the future with the past?
The reference to embroidery as a clearly feminine pastime occupation is explicit as it is deliberate. Indeed it’s called “needlework” and not a “work of art”. Yet it incorporates the mute feminine word, in order to seduce, embellish our lives, decorate our table. What is a work of art and what is merely “needlework”? Where does the border between the two lie? How is it abolished?
Homeric hymn to Demeter (2004)
Demeter I begin to sing, the fair-tressed awesome goddess, 1
herself and her slim-ankled daughter whom Aidoneus
seized; Zeus, heavy-thundering and mighty-voiced, gave her,
without the consent of Demeter of the bright fruit and golden
sword,
as she played with the deep-breasted daughters of Ocean,
plucking flowers in the lush meadow–roses, crocuses, 5
and lovely violets, irises and hyacinth.....
- Homer (Translated by Helene P. Foley)
The Orphic and Homeric Hymns to Demeter came from either Attica or Eleusis, and date back to the 7th century BC (circa 660). We cannot determine the date with accuracy, and these works are not attributed to Homer himself but to the Homeric School. They were religious hymns, sung by the mystics in the rituals of the Eleusinian mysteries, which were collective religious rituals, devoted to goddess Demeter, aiming to “cleanse the soul”.
From the first animistic–pagan rituals to the primitive goddess of nature, birth and fertility, to the later Eleusinian mysteries, these rites have a strongly purifying character. What is aimed for, through these rites, is cleansing–salvation, and the pursuit of answers to eternal questions.
Just as, through myth and religious rites, the process of remodelling–transformation is so profound and purifying, artistic creation is similarly liberating and redemptive.
Besides, as Catherine Clément puts it, “the spiritual quest is such a difficult process, that it needs myth to tell it” (Catherine Clément και Julia Kristeva, Tο Θήλυ και το Iερό, 2001).
With myth as the main tool, with the total absence of the figure, and with the observation of nature always being the starting point, there begins the examination and the pursuit of remodelling–transformation.
The “materialisation” of language–logos, with the direct use of the hymn to Demeter, is precisely what refers us to the material hypostasis of nature. Language, and its traditional communicative use, is given a physical substance in the work, in order to render the image of nature. At the same time, the traditional division between nature as the feminine principle, and logos as the male principle, is questioned and undermined.
In the process of pursuing answers and artistic expression, age-old and traditional engraving techniques such as woodcut, dry-point and relief engraving, meet modern means and technologically advanced methods, such as silkscreen and Plexiglas, in an attempt to transfer, in the gallery space, an impression–“sensation” of natural landscape and a place of germinating Spring.
An installation in space, with printed engravings in on-going repetition. The transparency of the material allows light to diffuse through the prints. Works hanging on the walls in constant repetition cover the entire space, reminding one also of the inherent capability of engraving to reproduce itself in copies.
Text by: Evgenia Vasiloude
Appendix: Orphic Hymn
TO ELEUSINIAN DEMETER,
Incense-storax
(Translated by Apostolos N. Athanassakis)
Deo, divine mother of all, goddess of many names,
august Demeter, nurturer of youths and giver of prosperity
and wealth. You nourish the ears of corn, O giver of all,
and you delight in peace and in toilsome labor.
Present at sowing, heaping and threshing, O spirit of the unripe 5
fruit,
you dwell in the sacred valley of Eleusis.
Charming and lovely, you give sustenance to all mortals,
and you were the first to yoke the ploughing ox
and to send up from below a rich and lovely harvest for mortals.
Through you there is growth and blooming, O illustrious companion 10
of Bromios
and, torch-bearing and pure one, you delight in the summer’s yield.
From beneath the earth you appear and to all you are gentle,
O holy and youth-nurturing lover of children and of fair offspring,
You yoke your chariot to bridled dragons,
and round your throne you whirl and howl in ecstasy. 15
Only daughter with many children and many powers over mortals,
you manifest your myriad faces to the variety of flowers and sacred
blossoms;
come, blessed and pure one, and laden with the fruits of summer,
bring peace together with the welcome rule of law,
riches, too, and prosperity, and health that governs all. 20
Hymn to Demeter
(Homeric Hymns)
I begin to sing of rich-haired, modest goddess, Demeter,
of her and her most-fair daughter Persephone,
Hail goddess and save this town, and guide my song.