Golden Aid
Eleanna Balesi
Opening: Thursday October 6, 2016 at 8:00 pm.
Duration: October 6 – November 4, 2016
Curated by: Stratis Pantazis
Eleanna Balesi’s exhibition, Golden Aid involves a series of works influenced by daily life issues that take place in our immediate environment. These issues are connected – but not entirely – to the unequal distribution of wealth, and to the overall crisis, which beyond economic, is mainly moral.
For the artist, quest for a better future, and values such as freedom and equality are seen through the prism of contemporary culture. She engages in these values through an anthropocentric-based approach, reflecting on the division between the materiality of things and its absence.
Eleanna Balesi’s artistic practice derives from the overall relationship of her artwork to the general instability associated to social change and structure. This ephemeral reality serves as a stimulus and a cause for her choice of materials used in a series of experimental work, in which she combines organic, inorganic, processed and unprocessed elements.
The artist’s work, formulated within the recent years of the crisis, serves as an outcry in the vast, subversive sociopolitical and economic surrounding from which it originated.
The word Golden derived from the title of the show, refers to the Golden Age of Athens (of Pericles) – a period of cultural outburst, intellectual and spiritual flowering, and establishment of democracy. The second word in the title – aid, spontaneously reminds us of first aid – of immediate assistance to human need as nowadays people desperately seek self-rescue; a distant utopia in itself, a gold-coated pill of temporary relief. GoldenAid exhibition raises questions about real meaning of value and the” valuable”, as interpreted by various social classes. How do these different, contradictory interpretations, meet and integrate with the imminent conditions of life? In any case, egocentrism and personal gain are clearly visible, as Luxury and Need, two conflicting meanings, bind in dialogue.
Eleanna Balesi’s Golden Aid is part of the Offspring Young Artists for the cultivation and facilitation of new generation artistic practice.
More information: http://wp.me/p2wFE3-yM
http://offspaces.eu/golden-aid-eleanna-balesi/
Eleanna Balesi
Eleanna Balesi was born in Piraeus in 1993. She studied at the Department of Plastic Arts and Science, University of Ioannina.
The main concern of her work is space, time and the materialization of the everyday sociopolitical issues. For her, the term ‘contemporary art’ does not manifest only the recent art production, but should address current issues. Her materials are mostly everyday and ephemeral and often charged by a story or a situation. Any given gesture serves as a symbol/ comment in today’s conflict.
Participation in group shows:
RE CULTURE 4, Patra, Athens-GR (2016) / POWERFOOL, Flat1 (in collaboration with CHEAPART Athens, Offspring Young Artists), Vienna, Austria (2016) / EPITOPOU 15, Andros-GR (2015) / Street Art Festival (SAF), Thessaloniki-GR (2015) / INSPIRE FESTIVAL, ACTIVE SPACES, Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art (MMCA), Thessaloniki-GR (2014) / Global Eradication of Violence Against Women Day, SocArtes team, Athens-GR (2014) / Action Field Kodra, I NEED A HERO, VALUABLE MATTERS IN VALUABLE TIMES, Thessaloniki-GR (2014), Paraliart, Thessaloniki-GR (2014) / 9th Athens Digital Art Festival (2013).
ArtWall Project Space
26 Sofokleous Str., 10552, Athens, Greece
artwallprojectspace@gmail.com
http://www.theartwall.gr/
Visiting hours: Thursday, Friday 17:00 – 21:00, Saturday 13:00 – 16:00
Offspring Young Artists
www.offspaces.eu
offspaceseu@gmail.com
www.facebook.com/OffspacesInternationalResearchProgram
