CURA.

For her first institutional solo exhibition in Canada, Greek/Canadian artist Athena Papadopoulos has created a site-specific exhibition of entirely new, large-scale sculptural works. Trees with no sound and Bones for Time, are shaped by the isolating experience of the last two years, produced between 2020 and 2022 in the UK, and completed in Toronto in February 2023.

In addition to using everything from her own clothing, to cushions, plush toys, chains, wigs, and textiles, Papadopoulos draws from a list of cosmetic and medicinal ingredients, applying items like self-tanner, lipstick, and hair dye to colour her works. What materializes are melodramatic characters that sit uncomfortably on the edge of the glamourous and the grotesque, high and low culture, not unlike the heroines of history. With each fold, tuck, wrap, and twist, Papadopoulos’ meticulously composed, sleazy, and sacrilegious productions overturn fixed notions of the lived human experience.

Positioned around the perimeter of the gallery are 13 sculptures that make up the series Trees with no sound. These artworks are the result of Papadopoulos undoing and re-materializing many of her home belongings – furniture, clothing, stuffed objects etc., to form a series of trees and gigantic flower sculptures. The transformed relics propose a kind of forest of fears that stems from Papadopoulos continuously asking whether this body of work would ever be seen, due to the last few years of changing schedules and cancellations, and correspondingly, whether a tree falling in a deserted forest makes a sound? The ‘trees’ become heroic characters that embody both the optimism and tragic nature of an artists’ need to create and build – even with the potential of no audience. The titles of the sculptures emphasize these timeless narratives, with suggestive references to art historical allegories, fictional literature, as well as biblical and religious stories.

Installed to resemble an archaeological museum display, Bones for Time takes disused hospital and wool blankets to literally trace aspects of the artist’s body into lettershapes, resulting in a variety of alphabetically orchestrated, ossified sculptural compositions. Each work invokes the language of a ‘disorder’ to create order and collectively they are fused with references to the seminal artist Richard Serra’s 1967 Verb List (where he lists all the verbs that are used to create sculpture). The title Bones for Time comes from a colloquialism commonly used in the criminal prosecution of murders, wherein a deal is made to trade the location of the victims’ bodies for a reduced sentence or to avoid the death penalty; it also has a double meaning where it refers to working for hourly wages usually attributed to zero hour contracts and more precarious labour practices. By isolating and elaborating on the character of each letter, Papadopoulos expands on her already uninhibited artistic language, or rather, quite literally in this case, she creates her own alphabet.