3 PAPACONSTANTINOU
On Saturday 2 April, FOUGARO THE GALLERY Nafplion will be opening a major exhibition by the well-known artist Leda Papaconstantinou, entitled “3 Papaconstantinou, Theodore, Litsa, Leda”.
Τhe work itself is a large-scale installation, which will be completed in situ by the artist. Made up of fragments of her parents’ lives and artefacts, the installation is a unique historical testimony of a family’s life course through the tumultuous 20th century.
Works large and small, wood carvings, tools, memorabilia, paintings, small-scale sculptures, artefacts and fragments of the lives of Theodore and Litsa Papaconstantinou will be interwoven into a vast and unique mosaic of lives transformed by the ebbs and flows of Greek history.
Living and crafting on the island of Spetses from 1966 for almost half a century, Theodore and Litsa Papaconstantinou exchanged one life for another in the wake of the Greek Civil War. They successfully turned the impasses of the era into an opportunity for renewal which they imbued with their inimitable spirit.
The artist has this to say of them: “Two wars in a row, World War II and the Civil War, had practically wiped out the life they had known and their plans. They had to build a new life in its place. And so they did, and managed through hard work, persistence and intelligence to live ultimately with joy. The years of peace were sustained by creativity”.
Leda Papaconstantinou interweaves her own works – old and new – into this large canvas, building a personal narrative out of three lives, shedding light on the relationships, forces and influences that ultimately shaped her too.
With this show, a daughter honours the life, work and memory of her parents, who lived with wit, grace and inspiration and succeeded in finally turning their own lives into art.
Leda Papakonstantinou
Born at Ampelonas, Larissa in 1945, Leda Papakonstantinou studied graphic design at the Doxiades School, painting at the ASFA (preparatory course) and Fine Arts at Kent University’s Maidstone School of Arts. Upon her return from England she settled on the island of Spetses, where her family lived since 1966.
She is among the first and few artists in Greece to have used performance as a medium. Her work represents one of the most groundbreaking propositions on A European level in the ’60s and ’70s, and aimed at radicalising the expression of art with performance as the focus and the human body as the field of action.
In terms of subject areas, her works centred from the outset on the human body and gender identity, with a tendency to register the sensory and mental stimuli associated with memory and time. She employs various media (natural materials, objects, 3D constructions, collage and sculpture, movement, sound and speech, etc.) as well as the occasional presence of herself in her projects.
The ritualistic nature and the autobiographical elements reinforce the multilevel communicative function of her works. Her varied projects are characterised by the free choice of materials which is dictated by the subject in each case—which is why there are series of works that use exclusively painting, sculpture, moving images, etc.
Standing out among her solo exhibitions and projects are: ‘Recent Events’, painting and sculpture installation, Dracos Art Centre, Athens 1986 | ‘Untitled’, painting and sculpture, Sao Paulo Biennale, 1989 | ‘Liquid Forest’, sculpture, Ileana Tounta Centre for Contemporary Art, Athens 1992 | ‘Genet’s Toaster’, installation, House of Cyprus, Athens 1998 | ‘members’, sculpture and wall-mounted works, Epikentro, Athens 1999 | ‘Past Revisited’, Lola Nikolaou, Thessaloniki 2003 | ‘Eye Witness’, a.antonopoulou.art, Athens, 2004 | ‘Performances, films, videos 1969-2004’, Benaki Museum & Bey Hamam, Thessaloniki 2006 |’Yes-No’ Aerides Baths, Athens 2011 | ‘Visitors’, a.antonopoulou.art, 3D works, Athens 2013 | 4th Biennale of Athens, 2013.
Her works can be found in the National Gallery, the State Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki, the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, the Rethymnon Museum of Contemporary Art, the Averoff Gallery and in private collections.
