
PROJECTS
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PLEASURE & DISOBEDIENCE
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01-03/11.2
screening event
CYPHER’s inaugural event, PLEASURE & DISOBEDIENCE is the first installment of an ongoing film program on this subject jointly curated by Sofia Kouloukouri (RE-SISTERS) and Alexios Seilopoulos (APROPOS). The program emerged as an inquiry on the artistic practices of various subcultures and on their modes of filmmaking.
Sharing a background in cinema, artist and art historian Kouloukouri’s research centers on female artists and representations of sexwork, while Seilopoulos’s curation of talks (Highly Opinionated, Barbican, London) centers on queer resistance.
The first instalment of Pleasure & Disobedience focuses on shorts, features and art films from the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s by female and queer directors. What links the two is the politics of pleasure and disobedience as well as tons of low budget DIY filming.
Liberty’s Booty, Variety, Born in Flames and Audience all made within 3 years of each other are exemplary pieces of New York’s No Wave film scene in the early 80’s when women filmakers such as Lizzie Borden, Bette Gordon, Vivienne Dick, Barbara Hammer as well as artists Nan Goldin and writer Kathy Acker collaborated in the making of low budget films portraying a no filter mix of their lives in the city from aimless wandering, to sex work, lesbian regroupings and feminist revolt.
Around the same time from New York to London and Berlin we observe the progressive emergence of queer cinema with filmmakers such as Rosa von Praunheim, Isaac Julien, Peter Strickland, Lawrence Elbert and others. Although I don’t know, City of Lost Souls and Days of Pentecost are each almost a decade apart, these rebellious, brutally honest queer gems employ popular formats from documentary to exploitation film and above all musical, to depict a time of sexual liberation, experimentation and rejection of the heteronomrative lifestyle.
CYANEAN
14.11-05.12
SOLO SHOW OF ATHINA PAVLOU BENAZI
CURATED BY ISAVELLA KLADAKI
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Athina Pavlou Benazi creates CYANEAN, an installation/environment within the premises of CYPHER. CYANEAN is the environment that unfolds and spreads from the upper level to the basement, an
environment composed of and completed by three distinct works that stand both as independent objects and as points along a potential path. The emphasis is placed on the concept of initiation
through a passage, from the outside to the inside and from the top to the bottom, from one place to another, from one internal state to another. From the Cyanean Rocks installation to the crossing and
then to the hideaway, staying focused to the axes that run through her research and practice and drawing from the natural landscape, Pavlou-Benazi creates a multi-sensory environment that invites
the viewer to become part of it and interact with it, playing between opposing concepts, such as the element of water, the sea and the rock, the intensity or stability of flow, and the suffocation of
stagnation as well as dealing with the ambivalence towards the absence of boundaries. The concept of the trace through movement is studied within the space, a space that is fluid and maritime - with
all the possible connotations - under the lens of time, a time that at certain moments runs relentlessly
fast and at others stops and ceases to exist.
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COLLABORATIVE PAINTING
11.10.24
Cypher is opened its doors on October 12th , organising an open art
studio. In a somehow experimental way, it invited guests to link up and connect with each other, while connecting with their own creativity. Deeply believing that every single human is creative and shifting the focus from an object-oriented artistic practice, to a process oriented one, it invites guests to experiment with materials
while working collectively in a single art piece.
Materials were provided freely and for the next 10 days this ongoing artwork was in display at the space of Cypher, prone to be transformed by its visitors.
This socially constructed, artistic situation, aimed to be the beginning of an ongoing project where: visitors, are welcomed to explore their own creativity, leave their gesture, participate, and interact with one another, becoming key stones to the creation of an art piece, while enjoying this shared process. Liberating oneself from the notions of failure, error, or damage, giving space to aesthetic impulse driven by materials. A symbolic transitional space is being built, to contemplate on how to shape collective experience together, deepening our understanding on how systems work and how to network between different groups and individuals, through creating an artwork that can be perceived as an open system which can be transformed and developed overtime.
Individual and collective stories could be contained and hold by this artwork, creating a non-linear narrative of personal perspectives as well as the bigger systems they exist within. Hopefully, reconfiguring social interactions within art spaces as
well as the communities they are part of.
duo show of Marilena Georgantzi and Nagore Chivite
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11.12-05.01
The exhibition ALL OUR HORSES, derives from Marilena Georgantzi's text of the same name and is the material expression of her conversation with Nagore Chivite within the gallery’s space. Watercolours on paper, prints on paper, prints on textiles and sculptural forms revolve around words, opening slits and passages through space, stitches that map mnemonic traces, psychic paths and imprints around the absence of Horses, interrogating the absence of our animal nature. Where did the instinct go? They open windows in empty spaces, lest they see the horses pass by. They play with the hero motif in fairy tales, the journey of searching, of adventure and doubt, of reconciliation with Absence, and loss, of the safety of what is familiar. The acceptance of a world being torn down to build a new one. They leave marks, traces small in the corners of space, weaving paths across uncharted expanses of material, inviting us to search for the footprints of horse hooves in muddy valleys until we connect with the wild femininities of our cellular memory, searching within ourselves for pieces forcibly detached or silenced, patiently waiting to be unearthed and made ours again. Bits and pieces, life-giving parts, life-giving limbs that might be frightening, molds of what is called to reveal itself to us, fragmented horses, their parts detached from the whole that - always - exists and waits to be reconstituted. Personal histories and references, intertwined with the mythological and the archetypal, inviting us to unravel them, exploring and tracing our own path, negotiating our relationship both conceptually and materially with them.
Isavella Kladaki