Vassiliki Theodorakidi-Mamona, acclaimed Greek artist, once again makes her mission, History as Art, a reality, introducing her new project of tracking Amazons’ individual paths.
While telling us different aspects of the Amazons’ story, these new works bring viewers beyond feminist boundaries and out of conventional notions, which take Amazons to be tough, vigorous, and far-removed from sentiments or affection.
Vassiliki’s recent endeavor is to bring Amazons out from a collective anonymity to individual recognition. She says that her sculpting “acts decisively, creating points, elements, and symbols, from which one can recognize and name each Amazonian personality ... as an independent entity.”
Amazons entered history books as women who left their social roles and became warriors. “Through the art we can … find out what was the feeling that made each Amazonian figure … overcome the social establishment and leave their own mark in the course of history,” the artist said.
“By looking into the soul of Amazons, this story makes us witnesses of the journey of the female figure through all the roles that a woman is required to play, from the Amazons’ era till today—roles such as lover, mother, caring daughter, warrior, winner, ... dynamic and independent, yet caring, emotional, and vulnerable—all embraced in the iconic female figure,” she continued.
Love-War-Death
According to Vassiliki, who is known as an artist by her first name, two concepts lead a human soul to transcend the human limits and write history: the “Ideal” and the triptych “Love-War-Death, which leads to immortality.”
Regarding her last exhibit, As Long as Achaeans Shall Exist, she explained that the “Ideal” is something that a human strongly loves, believes in, and wants to reach. For this ideal, one may go to war, risk one’s life, fight, and even die.
The act of surpassing oneself for an ideal and dying for it writes a story that remains for the future. It makes a person immortal, as people will remember the person and the story forever.
“Every heroic act is a result of a deep spiritual background and intense sentiments, because these are the only motives powerful enough to lead someone to surpass himself and his limits and write his own history. These elements, however, are not limited to race and gender. The fight for one’s ideals, the claim, and courage are characteristics of the human soul,” the artist explained.
With the Amazon project, Vassiliki aims at investigating the timelessness of human transcendence from a woman’s perspective, taking inspiration from the previous exhibition’s masterpiece, the shield of King Philip of Macedonia. The shield depicts the battle of Achilles with the queen of the Amazons, Penthesilea.
Vassiliki talked about the equal duel, in which the male warrior killed Queen Penthesilea: “After the battle, Achilles, removing the helmet of his brave rival, realizes that she was a woman. Despite his victory, he became overwhelmed by emotions of love and admiration for Penthesilea. Thus, the cold surface of a masculine defensive weapon, King Philip’s shield, depicts the shocking amalgam of love, war, death, and immortality.”
Photography and Music
Vassiliki’s narrative journey is artistically realized in collaboration with an exceptional underwater photographer, Gisele A. Lubsen, who chooses to capture moments within the greatness of an underwater environment.
Within this project, the aquatic environment acts like the mother’s womb. In it, we have the privilege of an unprecedented serenity, a unique silence and tranquility, where someone does not need to speak or scream to be heard.
There, truths are well-protected, “almost gestated, as the special Amazonian DNA was gestated within mother Otriri’s womb, in an environment where time and senses operate beyond their conventional, linear conception,” Vassiliki said.
Gisele A. Lubsen’s unique talent comes to capture these truths and record their instantaneous footprint before they are lost in the universe.
A talented young lady, Anna Stereopoulou, also plays a decisive role in the project. Inspired by each of the portrayed Amazons, she gives them a “voice.” She brings the pulse of the Amazonian souls to life through her music, which is characterized by a fusion of epic melodies and “soundscapes,” as the composer describes it.
Global Perspective
As scientific research has proven that the Amazons existed globally, this project advocates for a global sense, which Vassiliki regards as a big challenge.
Tracing the paths of the Amazon Thalestris, who followed Alexander the Great on his trip to India, staying with him 13 days in order to conceive his child, the exhibition will travel to India next spring after its presentation in Greece.
This is the place Alexander the Great reached during his effort to unify West and East, and the presentation there depicts the global sense of the project in the best possible way.
After New Delhi and Mumbai, the exhibition will go to Beijing, Seoul, and back to the West, that is, Paris, New York, and Los Angeles.
This global sense follows naturally from Vassiliki’s art. “The actions, interactions, and influences between nations, between men and women, between humans, the conflicts and convergence, they all are reflected in the Amazon project’s journey as a tribute to the eternal humanity’s ideal.”
Speaking of the current worldwide situation, Vassiliki said: “The crisis the world faces globally comes first and foremost from a spiritual and ethical crisis and thus results in [an] economic [crisis]. The collapse of individuals’ and the public’s ethics, the spiritual inactivity combined with the endless pursuit of material benefits, drove societies into today’s situation.”
She believes that “art in all its manifestations can ... act as a counter-balance in the contemporary decadent and self-centered modern reality.”
