Marietta Mavrokordatou
Our misfortune
15 Sep - 18 Nov 2022
In this body of work, Mavrokordatou’s material are the people closest to her and the city she grew up in, documented while going for a walk.
Within these walks, familiar subjects (friends, family) and familiar backdrops (the city) build a fictional narrative. A story that never existed is materialised and documented. Friends become subjects, role models, fashion models, commercialised, adored, perceived, depicted. Public sites become temporary structures to the new narrative.
In the process of building the narrative, a vocabulary consisting of experiential or personal associations is gathered, and then used for the purpose of being ignored, escaped, re-written. A fictional reality created out of the need to escape a supposed condition; the unbearable heat, the burden of predictability, the anxiety of her generation. Unavoidably, the new reality is born out of the very things its trying to escape, becoming a shinier, sexier, more poetic version of itself. The artist’s material is what surrounds her, what touches her on a daily basis- you can’t become without existing.
This body of work introduces a new framework for Mavrokordatou’s practice. Consisting of 24 individual photographs and one collage, it was taken on a single walk in late July.
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Marietta Mavrokordatou (b. 1996, Nicosia, Cyprus) is a visual artist based between London and Nicosia. Mavrokordatou is currently studying at The Slade School of Fine Art, London, UK, obtaining her MFA in Fine Art Media. She received her BA in Fine Art Photography from Camberwell College of Arts, London, UK in 2019. Her first solo exhibition, Rotten Sun, took place at TESTDRIVE, DriveDrive, Nicosia, Cyprus (2019).
Selected group exhibitions include Social Sculptures BEUYS100, Goethe Institut Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus (2021); Seeking Roots, curated by Ioulita Toumazi, NiMAC, Nicosia, Cyprus (2021); ...vida digna de ser vivida, curated by Peter Eramian, Phytorio Association, Nicosia, Cyprus (2019); Weltanschauung, Copeland Gallery, London, UK (2018).
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Artist talk: Notes on the darkroom
Watch
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[There are joules, jewels, Julys]
Wherever you put a comma in a room, that’s its center. There are commas separating these photographs— like hot neurons or the quick change in feeling when you pass through a slice of shade. Punctuation is more liquid than you think. A walk is one sentence. The photographer places commas as she proceeds, the one she’s capturing pays attention or not at all; the sentence structure of their walk imitates the glowing fog of light it’s in; the commas dilate and become tiny heirs of this pictured friendship, its sleepy conduction through the street. One comma and she is nuanced— nubes, Latin for clouds— one more comma and she is a numen of light that has a tendency for sleep, another comma and arms, legs, and bellies dissolve either from heat or an extremity of glow.
The photos are granting me permission to look, then permission to follow, then
permission to turn— turn left, turn to myself, turn over. The lens picks its turns indolently, as if it possesses some generational knowledge that this heat will simply keep increasing. Carefully, the lens winds through this sentence-walk and stops without stopping as one does when meeting a comma. Dramatic, hot, quiet, voltaic. A mutual thought wonders how one happens to inherit heat; [...] Rend open the heat, / cut apart the heat, / [...] Fruit cannot drop / through this thick air— / fruit cannot fall into heat [...]
The scientific unit of energy is joules (J); the heat in these photographs measures to about one thousand Julys. The textures appear fragile against the conviction of the model, who I will now call Goddess, as she is progressively convincing me she is fit for it. Goddess performs a persistent dance: it makes its entrance only to abandon the decision a comma later; I guess that’s fitting for a goddess in melting light. It’s a liquid world. The colour picks its own ambiguous fantasy; wiped out because of the bleaching heat or is it tearing the heat apart to bring cold. How invasive can you be. The photographer swims from one frame to the next and wads of things— skirts, bellybuttons, exasperation— are caught in the word play between joules and jewels.
Text by Penelope Ioannou
1 Politics of Friendship, essay by Jacques Derrida
2 The Complete Untitled Film Stills, exhibition by Cindy Sherman
3 My Year of Rest and Relaxation, novel by Ottessa Moshfegh 4 Heat, lines cited (1-2 & 4-6), poem by H.D
5 Caryatids and Promiscuity, text by Moyra Davis 6 The Unnamable, novel by Samuel Beckett
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Our misfortune
15 Sep - 18 Nov 2022
In this body of work, Mavrokordatou’s material are the people closest to her and the city she grew up in, documented while going for a walk.
Within these walks, familiar subjects (friends, family) and familiar backdrops (the city) build a fictional narrative. A story that never existed is materialised and documented. Friends become subjects, role models, fashion models, commercialised, adored, perceived, depicted. Public sites become temporary structures to the new narrative.
In the process of building the narrative, a vocabulary consisting of experiential or personal associations is gathered, and then used for the purpose of being ignored, escaped, re-written. A fictional reality created out of the need to escape a supposed condition; the unbearable heat, the burden of predictability, the anxiety of her generation. Unavoidably, the new reality is born out of the very things its trying to escape, becoming a shinier, sexier, more poetic version of itself. The artist’s material is what surrounds her, what touches her on a daily basis- you can’t become without existing.
This body of work introduces a new framework for Mavrokordatou’s practice. Consisting of 24 individual photographs and one collage, it was taken on a single walk in late July.
-
Marietta Mavrokordatou (b. 1996, Nicosia, Cyprus) is a visual artist based between London and Nicosia. Mavrokordatou is currently studying at The Slade School of Fine Art, London, UK, obtaining her MFA in Fine Art Media. She received her BA in Fine Art Photography from Camberwell College of Arts, London, UK in 2019. Her first solo exhibition, Rotten Sun, took place at TESTDRIVE, DriveDrive, Nicosia, Cyprus (2019).
Selected group exhibitions include Social Sculptures BEUYS100, Goethe Institut Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus (2021); Seeking Roots, curated by Ioulita Toumazi, NiMAC, Nicosia, Cyprus (2021); ...vida digna de ser vivida, curated by Peter Eramian, Phytorio Association, Nicosia, Cyprus (2019); Weltanschauung, Copeland Gallery, London, UK (2018).
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Artist talk: Notes on the darkroom
Watch
------------------------------------------------------------------
[There are joules, jewels, Julys]
Wherever you put a comma in a room, that’s its center. There are commas separating these photographs— like hot neurons or the quick change in feeling when you pass through a slice of shade. Punctuation is more liquid than you think. A walk is one sentence. The photographer places commas as she proceeds, the one she’s capturing pays attention or not at all; the sentence structure of their walk imitates the glowing fog of light it’s in; the commas dilate and become tiny heirs of this pictured friendship, its sleepy conduction through the street. One comma and she is nuanced— nubes, Latin for clouds— one more comma and she is a numen of light that has a tendency for sleep, another comma and arms, legs, and bellies dissolve either from heat or an extremity of glow.
The photos are granting me permission to look, then permission to follow, then
permission to turn— turn left, turn to myself, turn over. The lens picks its turns indolently, as if it possesses some generational knowledge that this heat will simply keep increasing. Carefully, the lens winds through this sentence-walk and stops without stopping as one does when meeting a comma. Dramatic, hot, quiet, voltaic. A mutual thought wonders how one happens to inherit heat; [...] Rend open the heat, / cut apart the heat, / [...] Fruit cannot drop / through this thick air— / fruit cannot fall into heat [...]
The scientific unit of energy is joules (J); the heat in these photographs measures to about one thousand Julys. The textures appear fragile against the conviction of the model, who I will now call Goddess, as she is progressively convincing me she is fit for it. Goddess performs a persistent dance: it makes its entrance only to abandon the decision a comma later; I guess that’s fitting for a goddess in melting light. It’s a liquid world. The colour picks its own ambiguous fantasy; wiped out because of the bleaching heat or is it tearing the heat apart to bring cold. How invasive can you be. The photographer swims from one frame to the next and wads of things— skirts, bellybuttons, exasperation— are caught in the word play between joules and jewels.
Text by Penelope Ioannou
1 Politics of Friendship, essay by Jacques Derrida
2 The Complete Untitled Film Stills, exhibition by Cindy Sherman
3 My Year of Rest and Relaxation, novel by Ottessa Moshfegh 4 Heat, lines cited (1-2 & 4-6), poem by H.D
5 Caryatids and Promiscuity, text by Moyra Davis 6 The Unnamable, novel by Samuel Beckett
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