Press Release

Sheltered Gardens is a hybrid, visual arts exhibition featuring more than 35 international artists, writers and performers. Inspired by H.D.’ poem Sheltered Garden (1916) and taking place in J. & A. N. Diomedes Botanic Garden, one of the largest and most important botanical gardens in the Mediterranean, PCAI’ new multimedia programme includes numerous new commissions and performances. Opening on September 22, Sheltered Gardens will unfold through an online, digital exhibition available at pcai.gr, a limited edition publication, a contemporary art group exhibition and a series of performances at the Diomedes Botanic Garden in Athens.

 

 

International Archives 2nd half of 2022

Sheltered Gardens

Diomidous Botanical Garden, Athens (Greece)
22.09 - 30.11.2022

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From Sasha Velour’ drag performances to Linder’ punk photomontage and from Chris Kraus’super 8 films to Leda Papaconstantinou’ poetic narratives, the exhibition sets as a virtual tour among climbing plants, bamboo clusters and she-shed greenhouses. It acquires a physical existence turning into performances, archives and traces of ecosystems and arguments rising within contemporary female gardens. Sheltered Garden (1916), by avant-garde imagist American H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), constitutes the exhibition’ starting point. A poem on H.D.’ relationship with nature depicting her quests as an early 20th century queer writer. Kinship with mother Earth, as a mythological aspect of cosmogony, garden as an archetype and gender inequalities have been discussed in many significant works by female writers. Alice Walker’ book In Search of Our Mothers’Gardens (1983), expresses the author’ own quest on ancestral past, art and identity as an African-American woman during a challenging period for human rights in the United States. In 1919, Virginia Woolf dedicated one of her first works to Kew Royal Botanic Gardens of London, while her personal reflections on issues such as spatiality and gender were vigorously captured in her renowned essay A Room of One’ Own (1929). Sheltered Gardens exhibition is an original hybrid environment referencing Donna Haraway’ (Cyborg Manifesto, 1985) rejection of rigid identity boundaries and spatial-physical restraints and proposing alternative, creative and environmental quests in times of turbulence.

Participating artists: Margarita Athanasiou, Eleni Bagaki, Michel Delsol, Kathleen Hanna & the Julie Ruin, Evan Ifekoya, Irini Karayannopoulou, Lito Kattou, Chris Kraus, Linder, Polonca Lovšin, Campus Novel, Selina Nwulu, Leda Papaconstantinou, Eva Papamargariti, Afroditi Psarra, Gloria Steinem, Eva Stefani, Maria Varela, VASKOS (Vassilis Noulas & Kostas Tzimoulis), Marina Velisioti, Sasha Velour

Curated by Kika Kyriakakou

The exhibition is organised with the support and the auspices of the Ministry of Culture and Sports and the support of the British Council and Flunet Productions.

Exhibition 22 September - 30 November 2022. Diomidous Botanical Garden, Iera Odos 403, Haidari - 12461 Athens (Greece).

 

 

 

 

© ArtCatalyse International / Marika Prévosto 2022. All Rights Reserved

[1] Sheltered Gardens. [2] Afroditi Psarra. [3] Sasha Velour. [4] Eva Papamargariti. [5] VASKOS (Vassilis Noulas & Kostas Tzimoulis). [6] Kathleen Hanna & the Julie Ruin. [7] Evan Ifekoya.