SENSITIVITY QUESTIONED
Curated by : Iliana Fokianaki
06.05.2010 – 03.07.2010
The group show «Sensitivity Questioned» opens on Thursday 6th May 2010, at 19:30, at the Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center.
Participating artists:
Jean Luc Blanc, Gregory Crewdson, Jim Drain, Ryan McGinley, Michael Robinson, Daniel Silver, Daniel Subkoff, Stephen Sutcliffe, Scott Treleaven, Dimitrios Antonitsis, Christos Delidimos, Kostas Bassanos, Manolis Bitsakis, Vassilis Botoulas, Antonis Donef, Eftichis Patsourakis, Theo Prodromidis, Panos Tsangaris
What is sensitivity? Curator Iliana Fokianaki views sensitivity in connection with one of its most common associations: femininity.
Through research on websites created by ordinary people, she arrived at a new definition of sensitivity, invented new ways of associating the sensitive and the feminine and what the latter represents, and used these as a starting point for a presentation of works that reference, underscore and affirm various aspects of the two concepts.
Thus, the exhibition attempts to articulate a new view of the ‘feminine’ at the same time that it explores how the concept finds expression through art. The exhibition’s curator comes up with a selection of distinctly ‘sensitive’ or ‘feminine’ elements, but attempts to challenge their basic quality, give it a new twist and invest it with new possibilities. Furthermore, since the exhibition features an all-male participating artists’ list, it also seems to be addressing the issue of the feminine side of men and of how they tend to deal with it.
Social assumptions that take sensitivity to be an exclusively female attribute are now being tackled in the visual arts arena. Works presented in this exhibition demonstrate either a choice on the part of participating male artists to approach their subject in ways that may perhaps strike the viewer as ‘feminine’, or a decision to offer an observer’s commentary of the notions of femininity and sensitivity. Viewers are therefore given the opportunity to rethink the meaning of femininity and to realize that such social boundaries are more in flux than they may have imagined.
Basically, the exhibition is a tribute to femininity in all the shapes and forms this may assume today. Through the works it includes, it hopes to cause a shift in the viewer’s perception of its stated subject.
Part of the exhibition’s proceeds will go to ActionAid Hellas to fund programs that support women in India, Cambodia and Haiti.
http://www.art-tounta.gr/files/exhibitionCurrent.html
read an interview with the curator here
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