XRW (Implicature)
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Zoe Panagiota (aka Betty) Nigianni
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Sketchbook of 53 A3 drawings with coloured markers, including 4 A3 collages with newspaper cutouts and printed photos. Sketchbook cover with red nail polish.
22 A4 drawings with ballpoint pen.
Preparatory work, 2023-2024.
Although dealing with dark subject matter, I adopted the visual vocabulary of the graphic novel, which I partly studied and read a lot about looking at different graphic artists' work, when I was attending classes at the University of Malmo, Sweden, in 2012. This visual approach gives a slightly comical note to the otherwise dark subject matter.
"Pop and Politics" (Pop Og Politikk)
Where does the boundary run between art and popular culture? Pop art embraces the iconography of mass culture. Themes are taken from advertising comics, cinema and TV. The slick, impersonal style is a deliberate provocation.
In Norway, pop art is part of a broader left-wing protest movement. Everything from capitalism and imperialism to environmental and gender politics is subjected to critical scrutiny. The exclusive, unique artwork is replaced by mass-produced prints and posters, well suited to spreading a political message."
From the National Museum, Oslo, Norway.
All that glitters and NO black holes
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Zoe Panagiota (aka Betty) Nigianni
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Design, 1995-96, 2023. Design, 1996-97. Photography, 2010, 2011. Essay, 2015. Collage Text, 2022.
The exposition serves as commentary and guide on the place of art, in a gradually environmentally and technologically challenged world. I further make a commentary on outgrown conceptions of the foreign, in terms of the so-called "exotic', and the non-foreign,within the context of contemporary globalisation. This, to raise open questions on the impact of the aforementioned on global politics.
The re-design proposal, inspired by De Stijl, illustrates the modernist historical view that art appears to be regressive, rather than progressive: as soon as a movement or a school becomes established, reaching its culmination, it starts declining.
Finally, I have included a graduate school architectural design project in the archaeological site of Eleusis accompanied by new commentary.
With essay about experimental film making in the British avant-garde, published in "Architecture and Culture" journal, 2015, which is about the environmental challenges of the urban environment. The reference to the TV show "Alone", a competitive prize show of sole or two-person players, is a reminder that humans can live in the natural environment developing survival tactics already applied by their ancestors.
About how to navigate this exposition:
Scroll from top to bottom, then from bottom to top, then scroll to the top right, then scroll to the bottom right.
For Luke.
The Saman Samadi Quintet
(last edited: 2021)
author(s): Saman Samadi
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This is a representation of the projects of The Saman Samadi Quintet in the years 2018 and 2019.
The Saman Samadi Quintet: Amber Evans, soprano, Caitlin Cawley, percussion, Martin Movagh, trumpet, Sam Zagnit, double bass, and Saman Samadi, piano. It was founded by composer Saman Samadi, an Iranian national with extensive training in both Persian and Western musical traditions. Established in May 2018 and comprised entirely of New York City musicians, alumni from the Manhattan School of Music — all talented performers of wide scope and experience —their sound was unique, paving new ground between modern jazz and contemporary classical styles. Their signature sounds evoked the newest avant-garde outliers of advanced 21st-century compositional work, and embodied an early 20th-century songspiel-like lyricism, channelling the rational integrity of Stockhausen, the polyrhythmic world of Reich, the aberrant sounds of Sciarrino, coupled with the expressive freedom of Don Cherry, all the while making a fait accompli of intricate poeticisms a la Rumi or Hafez. Reflecting upon a variety of past musical conventions, sometimes shifting cultural gears, from East to West — using microtones derived from one of the Persian scalar systems — Samadi, had engineered a bit of his own culture into the gambit of what amounts to an international musical collaboration. Amber Evans, the vocalist is an Australian, and Martin Movagh, on trumpet, was brought up in a mixed mid-eastern household, Caitlin Cawley is half-Celtic, and Sam Zagnit is Eastern European in descent — that made this ensemble, 100% fluent in universal musical communication and totally American! Improvisational acumen was both the achievement and goal of this group; if you let them loose, you might never get the genie back into the bottle.