artworks – Page 2 – Maria Varela

Nisos

handmade woven, cotton thread, candle wick, rope.
3d printed ceramics,
embroidery

The title Nisos derives from the nickname given to the island of Anafi, by Margaret Kenna in her research. The project refers to Kenna’s research and the ways she recorded the evolution of the island through three social groups: the local residents, exiles and immigrants who moved to Athens, as well as the interaction between the three groups. What is the imprint of each one and how did it influence the development of the other, having the place as a common point of identity?
The number of exiles in the 1930s began to increase to such an extent that exceeded the number of local residents. The numerical arrivals of the exiles to the island are translated from the visual to the weaving warps and create a unique pattern which is imprinted on the woven. The embossed decoration of the woven creates three traditional embroidery patterns found on traditional fabrics of the island (two peacocks and a deer). The three designs meet in pairs in its decorative zones and narrate the exchange that took place between the three communities.
Margaret Kenna describes in her research two more objects that attracted Varela’s attention. The first is the ceramic hives used on the island until the 50’s. The hive is a space that hosts a perfect functional social structure. This cell is redesigned and printed by 3D printer keeping the same pattern woven and thus creates an analogy with the social structure created by the
exiled to survive.
The second item described by Kenna is the baskets sent by the locals to the immigrants in Athens (Anafiotes), and the Anafiot immigrants sent back to the island, with products that did not exist in Anafi. These baskets used to be sealed with a cloth on which sender / recipient details were written on.
In the work the hives are sealed with fabric referring to baskets as a means of exchange and on the fabric are written three local sayings. These sayings are the only suggestions that Kenna kept in the Greek language in her archive.

Ceramics: Nikos Athanasopoulos – Sealed Earth Ceramics Studio

Photoghrapher: Stathis Mamalakis

Finite-State Family Structures

The work ‘‘Finite-State Family Structures’’ by Maria Varela takes the popular family house
as its starting point. Through architectural research and personal data, she creates a new
narrative in the absence of the human element. Influenced by the HYDROEXPRESS
space, the artist presents a house-like construction that extends over three levels, as a
reference to the three-story building that in Greece traditionally houses the extended
family. Inside she places the “intermediate space”, the space between the body of the
occupant in the house and its walls, as depicted in architectural plans of the early 20th
century which aim at finding the minimum possible functional space in working class
houses. The empty space takes shape to imply the human scale while commenting on the
physical – and mental – adaptability of the inhabitant to environments structured by mass
design, and the impossibility of implementing the opposite process.
The transparency of the house makes it an eye-catching interior that evokes the family
vitrine, a piece of furniture that gives an elaborate picture of the social class of the family –
or the one to which it would like to belong – and is addressed to the visitors. Like the
showcase is addressed to a “third” party, the whole house is transformed from a closed
circuit into a public condition through inviting non-habitants inside. From her grandmother’s
housekeeping book ‘‘Practical Greek Cooking’’ which includes not only recipes but also
good behavior guidelines for housewives, Maria Varela later recognized the experiential
application of its content in her family memories. She chooses to focus on the habits that
time discards over the passing of generations. A series of mind-based recipes becomes
the occasion for a dish made by the artist to be offered during the opening, addressing the
audience as guests, and reversing the process of offering into something ominous.
By referring to the home literally, as a space, and metaphorically, as a series of protocols
and rules, Maria Varela focuses on what is left remaining and what stays on the sidelines.
The empty space around the body that is not shaped and the recipes that will not continue
to be made draw the viewer’s attention to the “invisible”, with the artist’s house
construction acting as an abstract miniature of the symptoms of the Greek family. Finally,
the dialogue Maria Varela and the artist and founder of the space Marina Papadaki about
their family stories becomes a structural way to approach the work that also influences its
design: the inclusion in the installation of the latter’s crystal glasses that are part of her
dowry and an item displayed in her grandmother’s family vitrine.

Eva Vaslamatzi

one piece of cloth – an “invented” emblem

The project one piece of cloth – an “invented” emblem is the result of artistic research around the design and production of a flag. It refers to the creation of Greek national identity, as it unfolds through a series of invented traditions.

How do we commemorate the past, real or imaginary?

How does memory acquire materiality?

How does costume bring together and reproduce our national identity?

The research begins with the National Historical Museum’s collection “Flags of Liberty”. Once gathered, the symbols depicted on the various improvised revolutionary flags, the common points on all the flags are located algorithmically. These points provide statistical data to create a new independent motif, which is quantitatively formed and formalistically influenced by all the preceding motifs.

The new gold-embroidered symbol will be incorporated into a cloth made of pieces of fabric, remnants of costumes that were found in the archive of the Wardrobe of the Museum of the history of the Greek Costume of Lyceum Club of Hellenic Women. These costumes (fustanella and the costume of Amalia) became known as national costumes and functioned as unifying elements of the new Greek state.

Through the materials and the symbols that are sewn together, we can see how cultural symbols become part of the creation of national identity and how their power to recall memory, to declare unity and to indicate cultural continuity brings the experiences of the past into the present.

Artistic research, texts, video editing: Maria Varela

Narration: Yiota Argyropoulou

Camerawork, Photography: Aggeliki Hatzi

Music: Vassilis Moschas (Polygrains)

Sound recording: Nikolas Konstantinou

English subtitles: Penny Saccopoulou-Valtazanou

The project was a commission of the Museum of the history of the Greek Costume – Lykeion ton Hellinidon.

photographs: Studio Kominis

Revolting Bodies II exhibition photos: Panos Kokkinias, © ATOPOS cvc

ghost tree

“Intimacy: A modern tyranny” the exhibition of the Thessaloniki Film Festival that brings cinema and the visual arts to a direct dialogue. The Festival commissioned 12 Greek visual artists to watch and comment in any way they wanted, on a film from the film festival.

Ghost Tree is inspired from Azra Deniz Okyay’s film Ghosts

The work Ghost Tree is a mosaic of ceramic bathroom tiles forming a tree of life motif: a primordial symbol found in all cultures, but particularly identified with the East, where it is thought to originate. Ceramic tiles are a Turkish tradition. However in contrast to the multitude of motifs and colors they customarily display, only black and white tiles are used here, reminiscent of the western industrial aesthetic. The way in which the motif is formed, borrows the semantics of the drawing grid used for traditional embroidery and weaving motifs. Thus the process of designing a new identity emerges, an identity that leaves the colourful past behind, giving way to a new, dark regime.

Aris Rammos

Data Altar

Data Altar is a project that evolves through three ritual actions:

The first concerns the collection of personal data in a binary rate for one year period (July 2019 – July 2020).
The second is a video performance that presents a fictional ritual of purification and consolidation of the collected data.
The third is the act of weaving the purified pattern of personal data.

The first action of personal data collection evolves into a binary diary. Every day is judged as a “good” or a “bad” day, in the context of different socially imposed criteria such as mood, health, work performance, love and social life. Personal data composes a new pattern whose structure emerges at a rate of 0/1. The process of defining personal time in a binary identity raises questions about the ways we perceive and evaluate our daily lives and the ways Western culture norm defines the areas of personal achievement.

The second action presents a fictional ritual that heals the “bad” days, so that they can be woven. The ritual draws inspiration from common materials and practices that occur in non-Western cultures’ rituals but on the same time is structured on the semiology of Western scientific laboratory experiments. The narrative evolves following a sequence of kinesiology. The sound is created by polyphonies that act as a mantra. The rhythm is the connection of the multiple temporalities of the work: the diary, the kinesiology – music and the weaving.

The third action is weaving. Geometric patterns are created through the daily data recording. Weaving as an act is the recording of time in matter. In this case it is the transcription of the binary diary into material. Weaving is presented as a technology of archival production and the aesthetic result challenges the viewer to connect with the subjectivity of the collected data.

Data Altar,

Video Performance, Print, Woollen Textile

Data Altar Video Performance : 27.18 min

Concept, Art Director: Maria Varela

Cinematographer, Editor: Michalis Konstantatos

Choreographer, Performer: Angeliki Chatzi

Music: Vasilis Moschas (Polygrains)

Light designer: Yannis Fotou

Rugs of Life

My visit to Cooperative Tawnza has evolved into a strong personal connection with the moroccan women crafters. The cooperative is located in the valley of Ait Hamza, Morocco and was formed in 2012. Ait Hamza is known for the high quality wool it produces, thus giving women the possibility to create high quality traditional rugs. Afkir Eto, an experienced native weaver, has taught a number of local women encouraging them to unite into forming the cooperative; Eto has in fact donated one room, one half of her house, to create a working space for the cooperative. The women hope that eventually their products will become recognisable on a large scale and thus enter the global market; if this were to happen, this would be a step towards emancipation as they would be earning a sustainable income.

The starting point of the “Rugs of Life” project are the motifs traditionally woven on Amazigh Moroccan rugs; the main goal of the project is to reframe these motifs into a new typology of weaving motifs. Basic traditional symbols as found in folklore are initially deconstructed according to Conway’s Game of Life algorithm. Subsequently, the traditional pattern is transformed in a cellular automaton environment wherein simple rules introduce great complexity over the specific timeframes of algorithmic generations. In this manner, the traditional symbols are converted to organic entities and each generation is merely a function of the preceding one. The rules applied in the cellular automaton environment are not a one-off as they are applied repeatedly to create further generations of the traditional patterns.

The new generative motifs are compiled to a glossary that was distributed among the Cooperative Tawnza. Local artisans were called to use the deconstructed motifs to create a new synthesis on the rugs instinctively, driven from their long experience.

The traditional rug weaving thus becomes a contemporary design production which combines algorithmically generative pattern evolution, storehouse of cultural knowledge and
human craftsmanship of the highest level.

Theodoros Chiotis text : Warp and Woof_ on Maria Varela’s Rugs of Life

The Moirae

The three Moirae are transformed from mythical entities to three algorithms and re-define the destiny of western art archival resources. The mythical beings acquire algorithmic substance and derive material from the open licensed repositories of Western culture heritage through the Europeana accumulator. The stored files become operational after being fragmented and rebuilt through structural modification.

In Greek mythology the three Moirae are:
• Clotho who spun the thread of life.
• Lachesis who measured the thread of life, allotted to each person with her measuring rot and decided who will take each part and how
he/she will be benefited.
• Atropos was the cutter of the thread of life.

The myth defines the function and behaviour model of the three algorithms.

As the mythical Clotho selects and prepares the raw material, the Clotho algorithm draws all the images to be processed by moirae.
Images are selected based on three criteria:
1. date. The images selected were added to Europeana platform three
days earlier following that Moirae appear on the third day of birth.
2. the file being edited is an image from an art collection
3. the edited files are licensed of free re-use and shared content

The algorithmic Lachesis deconstructs the images collected by Clotho.
After setting the number of pixels per line, it creates a continuous thread that is unwrapped on the screen. The way the new remodelled material is presented draws visual inspiration from textile weaving. The thread remains continuous and rotates from right to left and then from left to right creating an endless weft. This alignment creates new patterns through the relationships that neighbouring pixels develop.

The Atropos algorithm cuts pieces of this new digital woven and transforms them into standalone physical objects, giving them a separate unique life to live.

Please follow the link to watch Lachesis performance which is live and different every day depended on each day’s registries at Europeana platform.

Web developer: Thanos Eleftherakos

StayAtHome

In this experience of Covid 19 quarantine, time takes on a completely different meaning – the experience of time becomes even more intense: we are not only desperate to fill our time but we are learning to live together in a time that has changed, has slowed down, has lengthened. I have chosen to experience the new temporality by weaving. Weaving is the process by which time becomes tangible, transformed and transcribed into material. This new temporality we are experiencing is directly dependent on the changing flow of information that is communicated daily to us. Time is now transcribed from units of time to units of humans: the number of confirmed cases, deaths and people recovered become part of a macro-history that we are able to see only a small part of. The information flow records medical data and the changes of the curve of the pandemia both locally and globally. These statistics define and redefine the new temporality, or rather the new way in which we perceive time and its passage. I am weaving this timeline everyday, the pattern that is weaved is not simply created by the constant change of the number of patients worldwide but from the emerging narrative of a new perception of the personal and the collective, the local and the global, the creation and momentum of historical events.

The pattern weaved has emerged from different layers of temporality: coding Covid 19 confirmed cases from day 1 to day 83,
weaving for 30 days, from March 14th to April 14th, experiencing my 3rd day of social distancing to day 33.
Data were retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus

Songs of Mihyar the Damascene

Illustrations of the poems of “Songs of Mihyar the Damascene” by the Syrian poet Adonis.

Every verse of Adonis’ poems is inserted into the search engine of different Open Educational Resources. The results are online findings depended on the subjective categorisation that a human gave them through tagging. These results are used to create a new composition in the form of a digital collage. The poem itself takes on a new form, having been expressed through a collective knowledge, and Mihyar is constantly changing identity.

Interactive Alphabet Primer

An alphabet primer embroidery in greek tradition was the first needlework a girl did in order to learn stitching and reading simultaneously. Women at the time didn’t have access to education so an embroidered alphabet primer was part of the home education they received from their mothers.

In this workshop participants (aged 60+) were introduced to basic electronics, conductive threads and conductive fabrics. While they were stitching they shared stories on culture, tradition, their perspectives on contemporary creative methodologies and technology. The stories were recorded and embedded into the handicraft.
The aim of this workshop was to create an atmosphere like the old days, when needlework was the social interaction between women. They gathered together to create and discuss. On the same time the attempt was to bridge the old with the new.
Through the use of conductive threads and fabrics, the embroidery itself becomes a sensor. By providing a platform of information coming from the participants, the viewer himself creates the narrative form. Each time an embroidered letter is triggered, a non-linear narrative based on the viewer’s own physical experience emerges. The result is unique and can never be reproduced in the same order.

In this way, by merging the natural organic elements (interviews, recordings, etc.) with the technical-digital media (conductive thread and fabric, sensors and microprocessors), the needlework manages to be transformed into a timeless cultural archive and at the same time an archive of workshop participants’ experience.

Project in collaboration with Afroditi Psarra.