“SHATTERED LEGS MAY HEAL IN TIME, BUT SOME BETRAYALS FESTER AND POISON THE SOUL.”
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN
Supported by the Museum of Contemporary Cuts, the Mediterranean Garden pavilion on the New Sea Waterfront of Thessaloniki has a contemporary art installation Knock, Knock, Knocking by Lanfranco Aceti, curated by Camilla Boemio. Known internationally for his socio-political stances and performances that have taken place over the past thirty years, the artist has conceived a site-specific installation that engages directly with the theme of the Thessaloniki Biennale, Imagined Homes. He has created a public window into the dismantling of contemporary society, its crisis, and the consequences on the private home. Through the metaphorical and physical act of ‘airing the dirty laundry,’ the artworks speak of engendered social frameworks, body conflicts, and political individual freedoms that have been dismantled and betrayed.
The Mediterranean Garden pavilion acts, in the artist’s narrative, as a coded and decodable cabinet of curiosities and narratives in a game of reflections between the inside and the outside — challenging the idea of inconsequential actions and legacies between lovers or between the state and its citizens. For the artist, it is risible that an offense has no bearing or consequences in a relationship; also risible is the notion that the economic crisis has had little impact on the conceptual and physical construction of the home on all levels of private and public engagement. The artworks unveil their long-term effects on relationships and homes that are now characterized as destabilized, wrecked, or destroyed. Women remain at the center of this engendered crisis resulting from patriarchal and phallic values of greed, pillaging, and inconsequentiality. The consequences in the Mediterranean context heavily weigh upon women’s ability to reconstruct homes and bring back together a torn apart society via their capacity for familial, professional, and social engagement.
Acknowledgements:
Knock, Knock, Knocking was realized with the support of The Museum of Contemporary Cuts, Arts Administration at Boston University, and the Friends of Thessaloniki’s New Waterfront Association.
Image Captions:
[1] Lanfranco Aceti, Knock, Knock, Knocking, 2017. Bed sheets, clothes line, clothes pegs, paint, and bodily fluids. Public sculptural installation. Photographic print from the sculptural installation. Dimensions: 67 cm. x 100 cm.
