A Builder Working on the Construction of Utopian Consciousness
Installation and performance, 2008
Work produced as a result of the summer workshop “UTOPIA and PRAXIS / May 68 – May 08”, organized by the Athens School of Fine Arts in Rethymno, Crete, under the curatorship of visual artist and ASFA professor Vassilis Vlastaras and visual artist Maria Glyka, in collaboration with the Slade School of Fine Art, London and the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht. It deals with the exuberant and much discussed concept of utopia.
Rethymno Annexe of ASFA
Photos: Vassilis Vlastaras and Fotini Kalle
Utopia is a concept that fascinates artists as a free expression of the ideal and desire. Through utopia, art is released from the constraints of reality and finds its way to the expression of its visions.
The artist worked in the surrounding area of the Station and more specifically in the woods, combining materials she found, such as stones, wood, pine cones, etc., with selected prints of images in order to create an image within an image. The tree and its image as well as the illusion of multiple bridges that one can only mentally cross. When her installation was completed, she presented the audience with an action in which she demolished the bridges she had built all the previous days and rebuilt new ones with the help of the broken pieces, performing, as she said, the work of “a builder working on the construction of utopian consciousness”.
In 2010 an exhibition called Utopia Project was held at the Institute of Contemporary Greek Art with all the archival material from the works produced in this annual workshop.