ERATO HADJISAVVA
Flying Idols II
Solo Exhibition
A solo exhibition by Erato Hadjisavva inaugurated on July 24 at the archaeological site of the Ibrahim Han Mosque, Fortezza, Rethymnon.
The exhibition was organised by the Contemporary Art Museum of Crete in cooperation with the House of Cyprus with the support of the Cultural Services of the Ministry of Education and Culture of Cyprus.
The main sponsors of the exhibition are CYTA and GENESIS Pharma SA.
The exhibition was curated by the art historian and critic Efi Strousa.
In her seventh solo show, entitled Flying Idols II in Rethymnon, Erato Hadjisavva presented a video installation specifically conceived for the historical site of the Ibrahim Han Mosque, alongside mixed media works, drawings and Plexiglas prints, installed on selected spots on site as symbolic tributes to the dual religious memory – first Christian and then Muslim – of the location where the mosque was built.
In the Fortezza of Rethymnon, beneath the imposing dome of the Ibrahim Han Mosque, where the visitor follows a path charted inside specific territorial boundaries amongst specimens and fragments belonging to a diverse stratification of civilisations and religions, the artist presented a series of video and sound installations, with which she spectacularly expanded the limits of the site, both visually and mentally. Using transmuted patterns of bird flight motion she made a powerful statement on the energy stored in mobility, which has infused physical and mental activity across all times and cultures.
Recently presented in a solo exhibition at the House of Cyprus in Athens, the series of video works, mainly featuring flocks of birds in the air, in diverse formations of alternating blocks, fluid forms, motion in constant transformation, which evoke a sense of either release or confinement, attracted the interest of both the public and the art world. The video she made on this subject, entitled Waves, in 2005 garnered the Golden Lighthouse Award at the Alexandria Biennale, where the artist represented Cyprus.
Using various media – drawing, digital image processing and printing on various materials, such as paper, Plexiglas and stainless steel, as well as video and sound installations, and 3D animations – Hadjisavva blazes a trail in which the visual stimuli of incessant movement and of shifting spatial boundaries prevail. The artist’s investigation focuses on expanding territorial limits and capturing the volatility of a visual viewing of the world and life, which is dramatically enhanced through the possibilities created by technology.
In her preface for the catalogue, the art historian and critic Efi Strousa, curator of the exhibition, noted: "Exhibited in a common space, these diverse scripts make up an environment in which the repetitive view of a ceaseless flying seems to allude to the restless flights of the mind around the inexhaustible issue of the image-making process...To Erato Hadjisavva, the mutability of boundaries is at the same time an inevitable condition for the intellectual development of the individual. In her work the change or the abolition of spatial boundaries takes place both in and out of historical time. She seems to be telling her own story of her attempt to reach the deeper roots of humanity, where the intellectual activity establishes meeting points and crossroads between thought and language. Ultimately, the flying idols seem to be narrating the condensed energy emitted by the intellectual and artistic act".
The catalogue which accompanied the exhibition traces the evolution of this series over different periods of time, featuring the “readings” written in 2004 and 2005 by the art theorist Thanassis Moutsopoulos, as well as a preface by Efi Strousa.
The catalogue was published alongside the artist’s solo exhibition at the House of Cyprus, with the generous sponsorship of GENESIS Pharma SA.
Exhibition duration: July 24 - August 30, 2009
BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL DATA
Erato Hadjisavva was born in Nicosia in 1966. In 1983-1985 she studied at the University of Economic Sciences and in 1985 was admitted to the Athens School of Fine Arts; she graduated in 1990 with honours, receiving a Hellenic Fellowship Foundation (IKY) scholarship.
In 2000-2008, she worked at the 7th Workshop at the Athens School of Fine Arts on secondment from secondary school teaching.
She has held six solo exhibitions and has participated in many group exhibitions in Greece and Cyprus.
In 2005 she received the Golden Lighthouse, the first prize at the Alexandria Biennale.
She lives and works in Athens.
