Eleni Kamma expose en solo à la Villa Romana à Florence.
Du 25 mai  au 28 juin
Vernissage le 25 mai à 19h.

Le communiqué de la Villa Romana : 

Eleni Kamma’s practice is informed by the inherent gaps and contradictions within existing cultural narratives and structures. By revisiting systems of classification and strategies of description and taxonomy, she examines the relation of the cliché, the banal and the stereotype, to the formation of history and the production of meaning. Her recent body of work examines how can words and images co-exist and create meaning by disrupting it; make sense by seemingly letting meaning collapse.

The starting point for this exhibition, whose title is taken from the sonnet of Averardo Genovesi from 1838, is the film “Georgofili”*, a 27 minutes HD film produced in 2012, for the purposes of which Kamma conducted research during her residency at the Villa Romana, as an international visiting artist in 2010 and 2011. Throughout “Georgofili”, an assemblage of different in time voices of Italy takes place. The old genre of Tuscan “Contrasto” verbal duels, in which the performers-poets Emilio Meliano and Realdo Tonti use their arguing skills to debate the politics and morality of contemporary Italy, meets historical educational dialogues from the age of enlightened despotism, performed and commented by the young Italian actors Lavinia Parisi and Marco Rustioni.

The exhibition “From Bank to Bank on a Gradual Slope” stages the premiere of the film among a selection of found objects placed on shelving structures developed specifically for the rooms of the Villa Romana in collaboration with the Belgian architect Breg Horemans. Windows and doors of the main exhibition rooms are projected along their own axis, until the point where they interfere. These crossing points shape the outline of the flexible and adjustable shelving structures.

The exhibition is accompanied by a printed edition of the Georgofili script, designed by Salome Schmuki. “From Bank to Bank on a Gradual Slope” openly invites the viewer to a spatial exploration between lived experience and a simultaneous reflection of contemporary Florence.

Eleni Kamma was born in 1973 in Athens and lives and works in Brussels and Maastricht. She was nominated for the 5th DESTE Prize and received the Lissone Award in 2007. Solo exhibitions include Enlever et Entretenir II, Wiels Project Room, Brussels (2011), Enlever et Entretenir I, HEDAH, Maastricht (2010), Forgotten Ties, Nadja Villene, Lieges, (2009). She has participated in numerous group exhibitions such as Found in Translation, Chapter L, Casino Luxembourg (2011), Expanded Ecologies. Perspectives in a time of emergency, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (2009), Freeze! Who is there? 1st International Moscow Young Biennial, Moscow (2008); Chanting Baldessari, Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht (2008); 10th International Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul (2007); Other Spaces, 1st Thessaloniki Contemporary Art Biennial: Heterotopias, Thessaloniki (2007); Take My Breath Away, Galerie La Centrale-Powerhouse, Montréal (2006).

The film “Georgofili” was produced with the support of Mondriaan Fund. Eleni Kamma‘s exhibition is supported by the Cultural Services of the Ministry of Culture and Education of the Republic of Cyprus.

* The Accademy of the Georgofili was founded in Florence in 1757 in order to promote science in favour of agriculture.

Il ne reste que quelques jours, jusqu’au 8 janvier, pour (re)découvrir l’installation « Enlever et entretenir » d’Eleni Kamma, invitée par Emmanuel Lambion pour l’exposition « Found in translation, Chapter L ».

Le Communiqué du Casino Luxembourg, forum d’art contemporain :

Citation antonymique d’une locution anglaise bien connue (« lost in translation »), le titre de l’exposition joue sur l’ambivalence et la polysémie du mot en anglais. Celui-ci peut en effet se traduire en français autant par « traduction » que par « translation ». Le dénominateur commun de ces deux « traductions » réside dans l’approche étymologique du terme même de « translation », qui se réfère dans son origine latine à l’action de porter / conduire quelque chose, quelqu’un ou soi-même au-delà de son contexte usuel (de transfero, translatum).
C’est ainsi que, par delà toute utilisation sémantique restrictive, le concept de translation est ici à appréhender dans un sens plus large, métaphorique, comme le déplacement subtil délibéré, d’un être, d’un signe, d’une pratique, d’une discipline ou d’un champ de connaissance, s’ouvrant à de nouvelles perspectives d’investigation, de recherche, de transmission et de perception.
Par ce simple basculement d’une perspective ou d’un contexte donné à l’autre, s’opère en général un phénomène implicite et subtil de remise à plat, de questionnement de normes, de codes et de langages, de pratiques consacrés. Un phénomène qui, à notre sens, rend compte et caractérise bien des pratiques et recherches de l’art actuel. Par-delà toute approche générationnelle, nous nous trouvons en effet à une époque où le sens se love souvent dans l’interstice. Tout se passe comme si l’artiste créait et instillait le sens de son travail dans l’espace subtil et critique libéré par une sorte de « translation », dans le renversement, la citation, détournée ou non, la réappropriation ou le simple glissement de l’un des paramètres de l’oeuvre, tant au niveau du processus de création que des dispositifs de présentation, communication ou encore de réception de celle-ci.
Loin de se restreindre donc à une approche simplement « linguistique » du terme, c’est dans un foisonnement d’axes d’interprétations du concept que l’exposition se déploie : techniques, disciplines, contexte institutionnel, media, supports, codes et langage se voient, directement ou de façon plus médiatisée, tour à tour questionnés par les oeuvres des artistes invités.

Found in Translation, Chapter L est le troisième volet d’un concept curatorial initié en janvier 2010 par Emmanuel Lambion. Chaque chapitre, identifié par une lettre index choisie de façon associative plutôt qu’alphabétique, s’intègre à un cycle qui, autour de cette problématique polymorphe, articule autant de déclinaisons spécifiques en fonction de contextes, lieux et formats différents.
The title of the exhibition, an antonymous quotation of a well-known English idiom (“lost in translation”), plays on the ambivalence and polysemy of words in English. This can, in fact, be translated into French as “traduction” or “translation”. The common denominator of these two “interpretations” lies in the etymological approach of the term “translation” itself, whose Latin origins refer to the action of carrying/taking something, somebody or oneself out of its normal context (from transfero, translatum).
Thus, the concept of translation here, goes beyond any restrictive semantic use, to be apprehended in a wider, metaphorical meaning, like the subtle deliberate shifting of a being, a sign, a practice, a discipline or an area of knowledge, opened up to new perspectives of investigation, research, transmission and perception. Through this simple deviation from one perspective or from one given context to another, an implicit and subtle phenomenon of sending something back to the drawing board generally takes effect, of questioning norms, codes, languages, and accepted practices.
A phenomenon which, in our meaning, understands current art practices and research and characterises them well. Beyond any generational approach, we find ourselves in an age where the meaning often coils up into the interstice.
Everything occurs as though the artist were creating and instilling the meaning of their work in the subtle and critical area freed by a sort of “translation”, the quotation, reversed, whether changed or not, the reappropriation or a simple shift in meaning of one of the work’s parameters, as much at the level of the creative process as at that of how it is presented, communicated or even received.
Therefore, far from being restricted to a simply “linguistic” approach to the term, the exhibition unfurls through an expansion of the axes of the concept’s interpretation: in turn, the techniques, disciplines, institutional context, media, supports, codes and language find themselves, directly or in a more mediatised way, questioned by the works of the guest artists.
Found in Translation, Chapter L is the third part of curator Emmanuel Lambion’s exhibition series initiated in January 2010. Each chapter, identified by an index letter selected associatively rather than alphabetically, becomes part of a cycle which links specific declensions to different contexts, places and formats around this polymorphic subject.

Artistes : Lara Almarcegui, Juan Arata, Wojciech Bakowski, Pierre Bismuth, Aline Bouvy & John Gillis, Lucia Bru, Liudvikas Buklys, B-1010, be-DIX_TIEN, Francisco Camacho, Ludovic Chemarin ©, Koenraad Dedobbeleer, Edith Dekyndt, Simona Denicolai & Ivo Provoost, Agnès Geoffray, gerlach en koop, Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys, Sofie Haesaerts, Saskia Holmkvist, Hedwig Houben, Ann Veronica Janssens, Eleni Kamma, Ermias Kifleyesus, Gabriel Kuri, Adrien Gary Lucca, Jani Ruscica, Robert Suermondt, Simon Starling, Pieter Vermeersch, VVORK, Freek Wambacq.

Revoir l’ensemble de l’installation d’Eleni Kamma, telle que présentée au Wiels à Bruxelles : sur le site de la galerie