Recitation
by Angeliki Avgitidou
with Tatiana Tsigaridis
2009

Recitation Avgitidou

[… the artist, dressed in a red, fancy gown, tears up huge sheets of paper, pasted in multiple layers on the wall of a small, neoclassical building located at the port. The performance started with a little girl reciting a poem by Ioannis Polemis. Parallel to the recitation, the artist is destroying the sheets of paper, where the word “HOMELAND” is written in several languages. The performance allows the audience to contemplate the meaning of the word “homeland” – not as an abstract national idea but as a multidimensional experiential reality, which at times becomes attractive and at other times repulsive. The performance makes also a critical statement on issues of history, individual and collective memory, authority, racism and Diaspora. …]

from the festival catalogue
part of the 1st Performance Festival
2nd Biennale of Contemporary Art of Thessaloniki

Angeliki Avgitidou studied Architecture at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and Fine Art at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts (MA, PhD). She has exhibited internationally at venues that include the ICA (London) and the French Museum of Photography and has participated at the Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art and Deformes international Biennale of Performance. She is part of this year’s national representation of Greece at the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space. She teaches art practice and theory in Greece and Berlin/NY.
http://iamartist.info