DESTE
Foundation, Centre for Contemporary Art
GREECE | ATHENS
JUNE 20,
2017-SEPTEMBER 30, 2017 Save to calendar
Kara
Walker: Figa - DESTE Foundation, Centre for Contemporary Art
Every
summer since 2009, DESTE has invited an artist or group of artists to develop
an exhibition in the Foundation’s Project Space, a former slaughterhouse on the
island of Hydra. This year, DESTE’s Project Space will feature a site-specific
exhibition by Kara Walker, conceived in a dialogic relationship with both the
original elements of this unique exhibition space and with the landscape which
surrounds it.
The project
will transport Figa, the left hand of the sphinx-like monument of the A
Subtlety installation made with polystyrene and sugar, from its “new world”
location at the Domino Sugar Factory in New York to Greece, the birthplace of
Western civilization.
Configured
into a fist with thumb thrust between the index and middle fingers (known as
the “fig sign”), the Figa has multiple meanings across culture and history,
from Ancient Greece and Rome into the modern era. While it is generally thought
of as very rude sign, it also has magical properties as an emblem of fertility
and protection against the evil eye.
In its new
location, the sculpture’s transformation from art object to holy relic will be
completed by further applying copious amounts of sugar to its surface in a
collective act of “sweetening” the loss of home, country, ideology, or faith
that is our global zeitgeist. Appealing to the condition of slaves, migrants,
refugees, outcasts, and marginalized peoples Figa, like A Subtlety before her,
draws on the pilgrim spirit in all of us that seeks spiritual and material
fulfillment at the end of a catastrophic journey.
Contact
details
Filellinon
11 & Em. Pappa street Nea Ionia , Athens, Greece 142 43
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