Lia
ironing Greek flag : Video and Series of photographs, 2016
“I
stand here ironing” putting on my headphones ,
listening
to my daughter read to me Tillie Olsen’s short story.
Title
alluring to domestic life of women, anguishes of mother , and
above all the silenced women in politics.
Reading-Audio
Niki Lapithi
Lia
irons Greek flag (while outing on headphones).
Arrtist’s
notes on Video: A woman stands in an empty white room ironing
a Greek flag. While ironing she listens to an audio of a short
story read by her own daughter and written by Tillie Olsen “I
stand here ironing”.
In
the video we hear an extract of this story.
Olsen’s
story is about a mother and daughter, and takes place in the most
ordinary of settings: a mother, at home, ironing. The mother is
interrupted in the course of her routine by a troubling question
from her daughter's teacher. The question "moves tormented
back and forth with the iron," as she looks back over her
life and circumstances, the continuous movement of the ironing
clues us in to the continuous stream of economic hardship and
responsibilities that distract her from giving her daughter her
full attention and care. It's a world where those in power can't
be trusted to work for the ordinary person's best interest and
women are “Silenced” in the house, away from politics.
Text on video-
and what you asked me moves tormented back
and forth with the iron.
Come in and talk with me about your daughter
You think because I am her mother I have
the key, or in some way you can use me as a key?
There is all that life that has happened
outside of me, beyond me.
But the seeing eyes were few or
non-existent. Including mene.
With all the fierce rigidity of first
motherhood
She blew shining bubbles of sound.
blue
She was a miracle to me,
Looking like her father, thin, and dressed
in a shoddy red that yellowed her skin and glared at the
pockmarks.
All that baby loveliness gone.
But never a direct protest, never a
rebellion.
I put the iron down.
Eva
ironing flag in Mediterranean sea - video 1.11minute. 2016
For three years 1901-1904 [Blue
Period] - Picasso began to tint his paintings a
pale cold blue viewing the world through blue spectacles. A “Woman
ironing” was painted in his Blue period touching upon social
compassion and urban proletariat, themes currently shared by
Greece and EU migration crisis. Filmed in Larnaca -Cyprus