The body and other small tales:
Performance at the State Museum of Contemporary Art Collections
Curators: Domna Gounari – Eirini Papakonstantinou
Opening: Friday, 25 November 2016, 20:00 – 22:00
Museum of Contemporary Art of Crete
Messolonghiou 32, Rethymnon
The Museum of Contemporary Art of Crete presented the exhibition “The body and other small tales". Performance at the State Museum of Contemporary Art Collections.
A production of the State Museum of Contemporary Art, the exhibition was held as part of the exchange programme between the Museum of Contemporary Art of Crete and the Thessaloniki Centre for Contemporary Art.
The State Museum of Contemporary Art [SMCA], in addition to the famous Costakis Collection, today’s most important collection of Russian avant-garde works outside Russia, features a considerable number of works by contemporary artists which span all trends in contemporary artistic expression. Performance art, a practice which the SMCA has supported since its inception, redefines the boundaries and the scope of art through new forms and approaches as it seeks to establish direct contact and an empirical dialogue with its public.
The exhibition The body and other small tales; Performance at the SMCA collections, was first presented in March, 2015 at the Thessaloniki Centre for Contemporary Art, curated by Domna Gounari, Anna Mykoniati and Eirini Papakonstantinou. It is a homage to the body and to performance art through the presentation of photos and videos from events and exhibitions which were held in recent years at the SMCA and are now an important part of its collection. The aim of the show is to explore and reveal to the public the methods through which artists devise and express their artistic practice, using their body as a key ‘material’. Collecting and documenting works of this nature promotes the dialectic evolution of performance and encourages its practice and its acceptance by the public.
The exhibition included two tributes to artists who stood out in the field of performance art in the ’60s and ‘70s, Leda Papaconstantinouand Dimitris Alithinos, respectively, with photos and videos of earlier performances from the contemporary art collection of the SMCA.
A series of catalogues and publications of the Museum accompanied the show and fully document the works.
Participating artists: Hamra Abbas, Dimitris Alithinos, Yorgos Gerontidis, Khaled Khafez, Majida Khattari, Mischa Kuball, Daphne Lianantonaki, Evangelia Basdeki, Amiclar Packer, Natasha Papadopoulou, Leda Papaconstantinou, Alexandros Plomaritis & Lela Ramoglou, Alexandros Plomaritis & Thanassis Stathopoulos, Dread Scott, Athena Tacha, Stathis Logothetis, May Roosevelt, Nana Sachini, Costis Fokas, Youla Hatzigeorgiou, Thanassis Chondros & Alexandra Katsiani, Manuel Vason.
The exhibition run through 31 January 2017, and as always there were guided tours and educational programmes.
CONTACT INFO:
MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART OF CRETE
Rethymnon Municipal Enterprise (Κ.Ε.ΔΗ.Ρ.)
Messolonghiou 32, 74 100 Rethymnon
Τ: +30 28310 52530, F: +30 28310 52689
E-mail: info@cca.gr • http\\:www.cca.gr
