Theodoros & Laskarina EXCLUSIVE

FOUGARO presents at the GALLERY the painting installation “Theodoros & Laskarina EXCLUSIVE” by Stella Kapezanou. The installation comprises two large-scale panels that depict Theodoros Kolokotronis and Laskarina Bouboulina on two fictional covers of VOGUE magazine.

On the occasion of the bicentenary of the Greek Revolution, the installation of Stella Kapezanou examines the status of its heroes in today's collective memory and conscience. With her usual Socratic method, the artist poses the question of the heroes' role in a seemingly superficial way, but goes on to provide a dense web of references to pop culture and build a thorny universe of symbolisms, identities and intentions that inform our relation with the emblematic figures of our past.

With the trick of rendering the two heroes in their most familiar depictions but turned so as to look at each other, Kapezanou poses from the outset the question of authenticity, undermining the viewers' certainty about their true relation to images "enlisted" in building the Greeks' national conscience. Next, using the standard media practice of slogans and stereotypes she attempts to familiarize the public with this new image that combines the hero's figure as it is known from school books with the way today's "heroes" are portrayed on front covers, often with simplistic comments and a whiff of latent scandal-mongering. Finally, once the image has secured our attention, it stays within our personal space and time to measure itself against the importance that the role-models and heroes have for us.