On the other side of History

The official history, the one written by the powerful, every now and then can redistribute the borders and, if it's in a mood and smiling at us, abolish the divisions of the past.

The other side of history belongs to the people who endure the practices of the oppressors, without claiming and reclassifying anything. It expresses the human destiny on the other side of the history that is written in its own way and with its own means.

On December 1, 2000, a new exhibition was presented at the Rethymnon Center for Contemporary Art (today Contemporary Art Museum of Crete - CCA) at the "L. Kanakakis" Municipal Art Gallery, entitled "On the other side of history”, an exhibition-meeting with (or even discovery of) the artists of the “other” Europe, of Eastern Europe, which is an integral part of the history of our continent.

The exhibition took place within the framework of the Apollonia programme, directed by Dimitris Konstantinidis, a programme that, thanks to its multilateral collaborations with cities, regions and states, is a link, a catalyst, a platform for cultural exchanges.

The concept of overcoming borders, creating strong bonds between bodies that promote contemporary art, between artists and the public, around a universal artistic language, understandable to all, means also understanding the hidden sides of the culture and society of almost unknown countries which for a long time had remained in the dark.

The exhibition was made possible thanks to the collaboration with the Biennale Mitteleuropa of Schiltigheim, the Center of Modern Art of Marne-la-Vallée, La Ferme du Buisson, the International Film Festival of Bilbao and the Contemporary Art Center of Rethymnon. It was presented in France, Germany and participated, with the co-organization of the Rethymnon Center for Contemporary Art at the Balkan Art Forum held in Thessaloniki.

The artists and works exhibited were selected by the art critic Anne Tronche, as part of the program implemented by the International Relations Department of the French Ministry of Culture with the contribution of the Greek Ministry of Culture.
The Georgian artists gathered here, Manana Dvali, Shalva Khakhanashvili, Koka Ramishvili, Oleg Timchenko, Niko Tsetskhladze and Iliko Zautashvili came from a place of complete change.
One of the characteristics of the artists whose works were presented was their ability to let the signs of their frustration, doubts and scepticism wander. Beyond the dogmatisms of certain trends that advance confidently, they oppose to the devotees of the truth a practice that reveals an opening, a rupture, a painful process, perhaps something less radical in form, but more transcendent and more appropriate in relation to their place of origin.

The curator of the exhibition, Anne Tronche, in her text in the catalogue of the exhibition, states:
"In the eighties, the period of emancipation of art in Central and Eastern Europe was depicted in a certain way. Utilizing the contemporary Western trends, but also rediscovering historical avant-gardes, with the Russian-Polish Constructivism at the forefront, the artists acquired, through these changes, a new sensitivity towards the history of forms. After throwing off the yoke of socialist realism, we observe in these countries the search for true identity in a complex reality despite the desire to adapt to the rules and directions of what is called the international scene…”

And she continues about the Georgian artists in particular:
“It would suffice to look at how, within a few years, Georgian artists were able to experiment with certain elements of the form at stake, with certain technical acquisitions carried over by the main Western movements, without losing anything of their particularity, to understand that this generation possesses its own logic of development, a logic, which owes nothing to the naive desire to become identical, but which is based on a dialectical connection of approach and distance. In a strange way, having appropriated the technical tools of reproduction of television images, using the hybridizations of images realized by multimedia, allowing themselves to be drawn into the ritual of installation, the artists of the new modernism in Georgia recognize models and completely distance themselves from them. It would be a mistake to believe that the answers they propose today are a series of more or less degenerate echoes of the mainstream trends that, for the last twenty years, have represented the main part of modern activity. Their works ask questions, are formed like questions, often questioning their very meaning, as if they had to renounce all dominant cultures and find an element in art that resists its annihilation, something that does not depend on fashions and ideologies but something that remains suspended between the destruction that does not come and the world that emerges”.

The exhibition ended on Sunday, February 4, 2001.

G. Kalligiannis SA, 103 Ig. Gabriel Str., Rethymnon, was the kind sponsor of the exhibition's electronic equipment