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.