Καψούρα (LOVEBURN)
24 - 26 May 2024
Eight/TO OXTΩ, A critical institute of Arts and Politics, Athens GR
Curated by Raisa Desypri & Katerina Markoylaki
Artists
Vasilia Sofroniou
Katerina Μarkoylaki
Olga Vereli
Raisa Desypri
Fotini Kitiani
Christiana Chiranagnostaki
Performers:
Chraja
Melina Koylia
Μaria Faliakaki
“The word love is most often defined as a noun, yet.. we would all love better if we used it as verb”
Bell Hooks writes in her book all about love (1992), thus detaching the notion of "love" from
being "in love" and continues in a denunciatory yet deeply personal text about how in society we fail to learn how to love in different ways and emotionally connect with one another , while at the same time take part in toxic models of relationships. Audre Lorde, in her essay Uses of Erotic speech: erotic speech as Power (1980) , uses a love poem to her partner at the time as a starting point, proposing the use of women's erotic speech as a practice of exercising power and feminist assertion of the public sphere.
The 'Kapsoura Project' began as a form of creative research between nine women artists, addressing the cultural identity of the term "Kapsoura" in the Mediterranean and the Balkans and it's almost impossibly difficult translation - both etymologically and contextually - on other Western frameworks.
The nine artists attempt to raise questions about the transformation of the partially outdated cultural feeling of "kapsoura". How is it experienced in postmodernism? How is "kapsoura" expressed by different subjects of different genders and identities? What is the relationship between "kapsoura" and nature, religion,beautification, urbanism, or the political scene of the 90s? Can "kapsoura" and its erotic speech become more dominant and feminist; can it break or surpass gender roles?
Is "kapsoura" a battlefield?
For us the dialogue regarding 'kapsoura" is missing from the mainstream social discourse, as much as the dialogue regarding the meaning of love, emotional connection, female desire and sexuality - or if it is not completely missing, it is often overlooked as something trivial or irrelevant, especially if the narrator is female. By stripping “kapsoura” of its banal nature, we venture into new ways of exploring female lust and passion. We negotiate our personal experience, trauma and connection to the term, by suggesting different ways of seeing and experiencing it.
For us, a woman that talks about her feelings is always a ticking time bomb.
The kapsoura/loveburn exhibition functions as a form of a "de profundis" confession. It challenges the traditional form of a love letter and it becomes a love letter itself. A letter to the unfulfilled, to sexuality, pain, coexistence and connection, the public and the private. Above all, this exhibition is a love letter from the collaborating artists to obsession and desire.