The Selfie-Junkie, The Fool, The Animal, The Glossary, The Angry, The Collector Of Proverbs, and so on
Solo exhibition by Eleni Kamma
Académie royale des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, Brussels 16/03-30/03, 18-20/04/2018
Presentation of work in progress within the research project Casting Call, an investigation into Europe featuring a parade of cultural allegories through the locations that shape its present identity: Athens, Maastricht, and notably its de facto capital, Brussels.
Referring both to local art history and to a rapidly pervading social media culture, the allegorical personifications that form the parading core of Kamma’s research are given their first public appearance here. As allegories are metaphorical structures where the singular meets the universal, parades are social occasions where the subjective individual meets the unifying collective.
The spontaneity that characterizes the freedom of these festive, almost pan-emotional events is enveloped by an organizing element of theatricality, of staging. A parade is a moving collection of units temporarily connected in an infinite loop: as a moebius ring both inside and outside of a group, and inside and outside of a larger social context. When people step inside a parade and contexts collide, the potential of the parade as a locus for exchange become all the more apparent.
The exhibition’s title, The Selfie-Junkie, The Fool, The Animal, The Glossary, The Angry, The Collector Of Proverbs, and so on describes a selection of the allegories that Kamma has developed at this point in her research. The allegories’ attributes are featured as well: props to show who they are, but also to be what they are.
These characters of the parade reflect upon the history of parrhesiastic theatre and look forward, towards a future agonistic public space: a space for interaction, confrontation and exchange. Each of them is an assemblage with geographically embedded references and gestures that embody comical traditions and mirror the European diversity. They use different languages, symbols and gestures to parrhesiastic ends: how to enter in dialogue with the other? Together, they form, at the same time, an urban scenography in movement, and a poetical allegory on Europe. They only have one obstacle: they do not speak the same language.
The Selfie-Junkie, The Fool, The Animal, The Glossary, The Angry, The Collector Of Proverbs, And so on is a first step from Kamma’s research supported by a/r (Art/Recherche, Brussels) towards a film she is working on with Jubilee. Working title: CASTING CALL (for a Triumph of Parrhesia Parade)
With the support of: a/r (Art/Recherche asbl) and Jubilee, platform for artistic research and production