|
Artists Main Programme Parallel Programme Workshop Performance Festival A-Ζ |
| biennale mission biennale shop |
| Hellenic Ministry of Culture
State Museum of Contemporary Art Thessaloniki Center of Contemporary Art Visual Arts in Greece Art Editions |
|
|
|
| Natasa Poulantza Natassa Poulantza's Portrait 1917 is part of an in progress installation comprising portraits of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, known by the pseudonym of Lenin (1870-1924) launched in 2007, and based on published photographs from throughout his life, from when he was four years old down to his death from stroke on the fifty-third year of his life. As in her preceding series of flower portraits, which gave a sense of figuration, Poulantza aimed to present images after different moments in the life of Lenin with no agenda, wishing to explore the emotions and reactions they arouse in each individual viewer. Poulantza created this portrait from a photograph of Lenin found while searching the internet. Herewith Lenin is at the age of forty-seven in 1917, and is disguised with wig into a farmer and clean-shaven without beard, when he was hiding from the Tsarist regime in Finland. It should be noted here that - unlike the figures of Stalin and Hitler that were blemished by history - Lenin's figure symbolizes the human necessity of the Bolshevik Revolution. The fact is however that the revolution Lenin instigated collapsed over the years. Now that the fears of Communism and Fascism have been overcome, Poulantza is interested to investigate the significance of Lenin's image to people today. Portrait 1917 is not realistic, but belongs to versions that are removed from the original source. The color, dominated by fuchsia, makes this artwork ascribe to the category of 'pop' (popular) art. The pose was chosen to remind something other than the stereotypical image of Lenin - a very important person of Hollywood with a degree of superficiality. Embodied in a corner vitrine, it clearly refers to the well-known 'kitsch' (aesthetically vulgar) installations with memorabilia of idols - such as those that Americans fans keep of Elvis within their own homes. The choice of corner for the vitrine is also reminiscent of the traditional tendency of Russians to devote a corner of their homes as a sacred iconostasis. The corner as a site identifies a point between humanity and empathy, which is simultaneously both particular as inconvenient. Poulantza placed Portrait 1917 on one side of the corner so that the viewer may not see it head on, while on the other side it is reflected on a mirror so that the real picture is not viewed directly and - upon the viewer's approach - that the picture gets confused with his own mirage. Thus the viewer enters into a state of illusion and is forced to neglect the dimension of the artwork as a monument. The vitrine is colored white, as becomes this work's purity. Also owing to its simplicity - without the wealth of extra ornamentation customarily filling the display of religious or other great idols - Portrait 1917 inspires an inner calm, which expresses Poulantza's thesis - without feel for comment, irony or proposal to be open about her project's interpretation. M. Rogakos Art Historian  Download CV |  Portrait 1917 |
Sponsors - Media Sponsors
