The visual artist Elli Chrysidou is “starring” in the new production of MOMus-Experimental Center for the Arts.
This installation/performance documents the artist’s experience of merging politics and art during the period when she served as Deputy Mayor of Culture at the Municipality of Thessaloniki (2010-2019). Aiming to reaffirm the fundamental and crucial role of art in shaping politics and policy, this period marks the widening of the artist’s practice from producing images and objects to directly engaging with the community. "Artists are the real architects of change, not the political legislators who implement change after the fact." William S. Burroughs
"Art comes into play when politics fails." Alain Badiou Proust's questionnaire is not Proust's questionnaire. It is the responses Marcel Proust gave to a friend's confession album, sometime in his youth. After Proust became Proust, the questionnaire that was not his became published and began to be used in television shows and magazines such as Vanity Fair as a list of quick questions and short answers meant to reveal the true character of the interviewee. Politics and politicians are also often not what they appear to be. This does not apply to Elli Chrysidou, who is both an artist and a politician, or rather who is a person that deals with politics (because if you put Elli and the word politician next to each other, you would probably get confused) and who served as Deputy Mayor of Culture in Thessaloniki during the term of Yiannis Boutaris. Who is also a businessman and a politician, but a politician like Elli, not like other politicians. After all, it's better if mayors and vice-mayors are not politicians, but think and act politically, in order to carry out their mission with a certain sensitivity for the public. In the installation/performance "Art in social politics brings change" Elli reveals her experience from the period between 2010-2019, which in her own words was shaped by "a tattoo and a sea, a petroleuse and the "ship of fools", into a unique relationship between politics and art, both in the production of ideas and in their implementation, always centred around the community." Besides, in her artistic work, Elli does not limit herself to the production of images and objects. In recent years she has expanded her practice to also include socially engaged art. A development that, not coincidentally, took place during her tenure as Deputy Mayor. On both sides of this coin, Elli aims to build equal relationships with the communities she works with, in order to create the conditions and provide the tools for these communities to define and empower themselves. In the installation/performance presented at MOMus-Experimental Arts Centre we see drawings and pages from her diaries, we hear sounds, and watch a video/performance/conversation between Elli Chrysidou and Yiannis Boutaris who take turns in answering the confession album questions previously answered by Proust, and by so many others before and after him. The banal is reduced to art, just as in politics. Except that in politics most of the time this does not happen intentionally, in contrast to art, where even randomness is thought through and planned. At the same time, the drawings become flags, banners without slogans but with images that function as slogans of a genuine political and aesthetic stance. The central figure, the petroleuse -the female arsonist who may also be an urban myth- looks like Elli. Maybe it is or maybe it's not, as it could be anyone who takes the risk to create or to centre politics around the community. Lydia Chatziiakovou Curator 
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INSTALLATION 11-18/4/2024 MOMUS Experimental Center for the Arts, Thessaloniki, Greece Artist: Elli Chrysidou Curators: Lydia Chatziiakovou, Christos Savvidis Video: “A Commentary on Marcel Proust’s Questionnaire” (2024) Direction, filming, image editing, voice over: Eleni Stoumbou, Archaeologist – Director. Based on a concept by Elli Chrysidou OPEN DISCUSSION Thursday 11 April 2024, 18:00 MOMUS Speakers: Yiannis Boutaris, Chemist Oenologist, former Mayor of Thessaloniki Lydia Chatziiakovou, Curator – ArtBOX Epaminondas Christophilopoulos, Chairman of the Management Board of MOMus, Unesco Chair on Futures Research – Foundation for Research and Technology Nikos Marantzidis, Professor, Departement of Balkan, Slavic & Oriental Studies – University of Macedonia Charis Pechlivanidis, Director & PhD Candidate, School of Drama – Faculty of Fine Arts, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Elena Stamatopoulou, Member of the Visual Artists Open Forum, theatrical collectiva “Facta Non Verba”, Teaching member School of Drama – Faculty of Fine Arts, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Aris Stylianou, Professor, School of Political Sciences – Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Moderator: Elli Chrysidou, Visual artist, former Deputy Mayor of Culture – Municipality of Thessaloniki Click to set custom HTML
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