Exhibition Digital Embroideries | florentia-ikonomidou

Digital Embroideries, Art project Space 2023

In September 2015 I was in Mytilene on the occasion of an exhibition. It was the period when refugees were arriving in the area by the hundreds every day, travelling in plastic boats. One by one, they formed a long, snaking march from the beaches to the city. Most were men, but there were also women and children. While I was there, I felt like I was watching a movie or reading a literary book. My feelings, however, did not come from a director's scenes or a writer's words but came from within me, they were my own. Or was it not? I felt a kind of mutation taking place in the landscape, in the refugees and in all of us who, stunned, experienced events that after a while became news on television.

The first work to emerge from this unbearable burden was an animation -Heart Attack- an art form that uses time as a fundamental element. At first it was presented as a single animation in the video events Refugees. Then, after completing it as a triptych with the addition of two other animations, it was presented in a triple channel video installation in Hungary (DIGITAL AGORA 2021, Triennial) and in a projection on the wall of the fortress of Mytilene (Eyes Walk Festival).

I wanted my work to convey mixed images with emotions and the fluidity of time, as in a dream where there is no clear story but anxiety and the suspicion of danger. Dahlgren Ekonomides' richly coloured music, written to the rhythm of the animation, contrasts with the predominantly black and white animation to complement the sense of inevitability and loss.

Alongside video animation, at that time I was working on the series Digital Embroideries. With the first work in this series, entitled Spider of War, I wanted to express the loss of the familiar. I designed, in my own way, a spider web as a reference to the handicrafts that housewives once crocheted and placed on the armrests of the sofa or armchair in the living rooms of their homes. In my detailed drawing with my digital pen, I replaced the roses with tools of war. My line, taking on the role of thread, added, I think, continuity and coherence between the different elements of the drawing.

This was followed by Bayeux I and Bayeux II, which - apart from being a reference to the Bayeux Tapestry - also marked the new invasion that began with the war in Syria. In Weaving the road to Future, the central theme is a woven web. Intercultural Travelers I and II, Happy Birthday, Earth!, the three Dinner Invitations, and Conservation of Species belong to the same series of works with the line-thread in common. All these works were presented in international exhibitions abroad. And just as I was preparing to organize a solo exhibition in Athens, the pandemic knocked on our door.

I know that many artists during the pandemic worked intensively, confined to their homes. Initially, this was not the case for me. For an entire year, I seemed to freeze and did not engage in any creative activity.

Everything changed, however, when I received an invitation from the Beijing Biennale. I was asked to send, via the internet, a work on the pandemic. So as an optimistic, yet fearful person, I slowly started working and, through my new works, tried to exorcise evil.

During the internment and distance learning, I did not move away from the concept of familiar. On the contrary, by significantly limiting outside activities and having moved into my studio, I put theory into practice, having transformed myself into a new form of homemaker. After preparing food and completing classes, I devoted daily time and dedication to my digital embroideries.

Although my works are not exactly crafts in the traditional sense, the term can be used more broadly to describe any form of creation that requires artistic skill and personal expression. My images are characterized by clean shapes and color differences. Curves and angles often create a sense of movement and rhythm, while the use of colour and drawing details in composition seek to give the works an atmospheric character. In this section too, time and space mix in a tangle, along with memories, everyday experiences, hopes and fears for the future.

I wonder what time looks like. Does it have image, sound, textures, and smells? Does it have feelings, logic or does it flow indifferently, like a transparent river in a changing landscape, sometimes faster, sometimes slower, carrying us along, swallowing us up or washing us ashore? And how is it embodied in the images we form? Is it hidden, is it obvious, is it transformed?

Texture is usually an important element in printmaking. Depending on the technique and the way the print is produced, it can add depth, create a sense of rich materiality, and add interest to the work. Knowing this, I wanted it to play an important role in my own prints as well. In a digital drawing, several techniques can be used to create digital texture and combining them can lead to unique and striking results. When I move into this phase I feel my works transform and take on a life of their own.

The quality of the paper and the art print are two other important factors that influence the result of an image. As far as the paper is concerned, the choice of paper is important for the colour rendering, durability and texture of the image. I chose two different types of paper, specific for fine art prints, each with different properties and aesthetics. A heavy cotton European and a delicate fine Japanese one. On the European, the colors write exquisitely, clear and bright, while on the Japanese, the colors seem to integrate with the paper, like music and lyrics coming together in a song. From the first test print, it is usually apparent which paper is best suited for each project. For my fine art prints, I use a high-quality printing press and special inks to ensure color accuracy, detail, and image strength.

Along with the prints I was working on two triptych animations: the Sister Nature and the Peace March with Alice. In these the plot is formed by the images themselves. The way in which the images interact and succeed each other seeks a flow and coherence between them, enhancing the sense of dreaming and transport into an emotional and subconscious world. Once again Dahlgren Ekonomides' music, written over the animations, adds depth, atmosphere, and emotion, creating turbulence and highlighting important moments.

Looking back, I would say that in my last work I tried to explore the dream and portray the aspect of a non-linear time by depicting moments, representing past memories and highlighting future perspectives.

Florentia Ikonomidou

Digital Embroideries, 2023

The Digital Embroideries, which took shape during the period of wars and pandemic, comment on contemporary political and social events, constituting a particular personal visual narrative, where elements from the subconscious and the imaginary are involved. Their style tends towards a surrealistic perspective with a strong subversive humour, remaining open to multiple interpretations. They are sometimes reminiscent of digital embroideries drawn in detail, over and over again on the computer, resulting in striking compositions and then in exceptional digital prints. A puzzle of little stories is revealed the more you look at many of them. As Florentia herself says, her works transform during the process of creation, as if they slowly take on a life of their own.
The Spider of War refers at first to the Syrian war that had just begun. This woman, like a chthonic deity, weaves ceaselessly war handicrafts. These weavings serve as a reminder of the material culture and the house itself that these people leave behind. Instead of decorative flowers on the weaving, we see guns, tanks, warships. Although the Spider of War herself is a woman hanging by the neck, she remains alive and continues to weave.
Similarly, Invitations to dinner I, II, III are in fact invitations to war meals, as the tables covered with lace woven cloth, which we see in plan view, are offered weapons, grenades, missiles and all kinds of military material. Perhaps this may not appear at first sight, as the works retain the pleasant appearance of the lined table from a distance, but as soon as we notice them, we realize the horror of their contents. The phrase nature morte that we read in one of the meals takes on its literal meaning. The first two refer to the Syrian war and the last one coincides with the conflicts in Ukraine, but they remain a timeless commentary on the contemporary global political situation.
Similar transformations, using a modern vocabulary of war and thus cauterizing its timelessness, have been applied to the medieval tapestries of Bayeux I, II. On their floral decorative weaves, motifs of modern warfare have replaced those of the medieval period. The different troops of our time are joined by flying mythical hybrid monsters.
In the evocative video-animation Heart-attack, accompanied like all the rest with the music of Dahlgren Ekonomides, there is a pervasive sense of danger. This video is a personal look at the human drama of the refugee crisis and migration, which the artist herself once witnessed on the island of Mytilene. This work remains more relevant than ever as the drama of refugees travelling facing unspeakable hardship escalates and the drownings are never ending.
The video-animation Peace March with Alice is a different kind of commentary on war. In a bombing environment where in the background we can see monuments of global political heritage - we can admire it in the independent work My Background - it begins with the opening of a book, a procession, with Alice herself (in wonderland) playing the violin, and, as in The Enchanted Flute, followed, springing out of the book, one by one, by her companions: hybrid monsters of intense sexuality, as if out of medieval manuscripts. Alice's fairy-tale Peace March ends with the book's conclusion, promising us that the group will reunite elsewhere when new pages of books are opened.
A pleasant interlude in the gloomy climate of the war are the works that, often with humour, illustrate the broader concept of Journey, journey in space and time, journey in different cultures, journey in the History of Art, experiential journey, and so on...
Characteristic of this multiculturalism and polysemy that embody this idea of travel are our two Intercultural Travelers. They are two western portraits, a lady of the aristocracy holding a fan and suggesting a portrait by Rubens, and a portrait of Marco Polo drinking tea but remaining disheveled because of the mask covering his face. In the background of both portraits are images of travel memories of all kinds, textiles, but also objects and consumer products of different cultures.
As we observe the next two works, we see human activity developing inside them, little people involved in stories, reminding us of paintings by Peter Brugel or Hieronymus Bosch. The emphasis is on the effort of ascent. Very characteristic in this respect is the archetypal Tower of Babel in Happy Birthday Earth, with obvious symbolism about human nature, which can lead to war. Similarly, in Weaving the Way to the Future we are struck by its cosmological dimension, as the whole world, landscapes, and people, is inscribed on a woman's dress, highlighting, we might say, a kind of cultural connection with Japanese kimono culture.
In the Little Ship that travelled from the section of the exhibition on Haiti and the Greek Revolution, which took place in the anniversary year 2021, we see a contemporary religious image. A boat carries the students who took part in the exhibition, at the bow is the painter Leda Papaconstantinou who produced the idea, while at the mast is Florentia Ikonomidou, tied up like another Odysseus or Christian martyr.
Even more experientially, with a lot of humour too, Florentia handles the idea of travel in two more works. In Portrait of a Journey, the same painter is enclosed in a suitcase ready to travel, while in Unforgettable, in a bottle floating in a sea of red, her alter ego, Circe with pigs, is trapped in a bottle, a reference to her previous exhibition on the theme of a personal Odyssey. Inside the bottle we read the word sex.
A similar subversive humour, with a surrealistic tone, characterises the Preservation of Species, where a mermaid is encased in a tin can to preserve herself in a vanishing world, as one might say.
Another kind of war-global threat refers to works that were largely produced during the pandemic, which indirectly or directly express this idea of global threat, the war against the coronavirus, the universal anxieties and fears that were intensified, the condition of confinement, in contrast perhaps to the elements of nature that rage undisturbed.
In the work, with the eloquent title: It is impossible to resist time, we see the metaphysical agony of Man illustrated, as human figures are drawn into the vortex of space-time.
The Sea within me, where the water element overwhelms the Earth, could serve as a meditation on the melting of the ice, the ecological catastrophe, a biblical catastrophe. Although a little reminiscent of a Christmas ball in cloisonné technique, the Earth is presented as a ticking time bomb that has sprouted legs and is running. We recognize at its edge a single human figure seated, like Rodin's Thinker.
The nature at free riot is an idea that recurs in other works, such as Drop in Space, where the cosmological-natural character is emphasized. It is a story of a cosmological explosion, of a drop in Space, insignificant perhaps for the world but crucial for its own existence. In this drop we see flowering plants and even discern, on second reading, little flower stories. Human presence is completely absent here, as nature overwhelms the world.
The same theme, the domination of nature, perhaps bringing us to a new balance, inspires a series of works that we could say are characterized by their metaphysical content. The frequent use of the gold background is reminiscent of religious imagery.
Sister Nature is such a video-animation, without a specific script, which submits to the sequence of images. It is as if an appeal is made here to sister nature, perhaps identified with a great chthonic goddess. The element of confinement is implied by the fish that come and go in and out of the pupils of the goddess' eyes as if they were in the fishbowl.
The work entitled Exiled poet, in your century, say what you see, an invocation of the well-known verse from the poem Axion Esti by Odysseas Elytis, creates a complementary image to the previous video. A large golden eye is depicted, like a religious vow, perhaps the eye of the artist herself, seeing what we do not see, which recalls Magritte's corresponding work, False Mirror. Again, we observe here the fish in the bowl, a symbol of confinement, instead of the pupil of the eye.
Another form of offerings is suggested in the Supplication project. Amid a pandemic, the outstretched human hands address an offer of supplication to the ancient statue of the goddess Health, gilded by the artist herself.
Continuing in the series of works with metaphysical content, two more depict the war between an angelic figure and the coronavirus - we recognize the latter's forms under the microscope as reproduced by the media during the pandemic. In the first, the battle itself unfolds, which is aptly commented on by the title we shall overcome. In the second, optimistically titled Photosynthesis, the angelic figure, which could be identified with the dragon-killing archangel Michael, emerges from a purple flower, while the decapitated - but open-eyed - dragon expresses the positive outcome of a relentless battle between good and evil.
Finally, the very recent work I was offered a sunflower expresses the same optimism. We think it's about the joy of life coming back. Among the threads of embroidery inside the heliotrope we again discern small human figures, human stories unfold on the petals, the reference to the labyrinth and the Minotaur is understood as one of the battles of life.
Concluding our tour, we will focus on a purely dreamlike-surrealistic image, as if from the subconscious, which is somehow related to the idea of travel: a sequence of flying figures and/or shadows of birds coexisting and interacting with the rope-balancer's echo, which disappears in three-dimensional space.

Irene Leontakianakou
Assistant Professor of Art History
University of the Aegean