Ave!

2014

A collaboration between Alexandra Sinopoulou&Noemi Niederhauser
mix media installation: oil paintings by Alexandra Sinopoulou;
sculptures, ceramic, prints by Noemi Niederhauser

The legs sideways, the torso from a frontal view and the head as a profile, so one could easily see the nose; in ancient Egyptian paintings, human figures used to be portrayed as a composition of their various parts. The aim was to present a figure from its most characteristic aspect. Hence, it shows an interest in the idea of the figure/ object and not in its actual representation.

Today, marked by tones of cultural memories we claim to suffer from amnesia towards certain subjects and remember or recognize only the most self-evident sides, the grand narratives that have marked our collective memory.

AVE! approaches memory and historical artifacts in a similar way to ancient Egyptians when they dealt with representation; a focus on the idea, of history in this case, and not on any accurate representation.

The project, a site-specific installation, includes a variety of media such as painting, sculpture, and architectural elements. Through this, it re-interrogates artifacts from various backgrounds which at first glance may not seem connected to one another. But each element borrowed or appropriated is deriving from the same genre, a genre belonging to those grand narratives. The elements used share the fact of being strong representatives of certain historical periods, elevated as guardians of a specific story that has to be remembered, elevated to « cliché-images » .

Trying to find neither the origin nor the authenticity of the artifacts and images borrowed, AVE! develops a relationship between error and misconceptions when interpreting them. It approaches the subjects in an intuitive, non-scientific way, hence not interrogating the primal cause or the origin of the artifacts, but the raw effect when being in their presence.

Instability of perceptions and a relationship with errors become the intrinsic subject of the installation, the intrinsic subject of the blurred historical narrative that is disseminated.