AWAY AND BOIL YOUR HEADSelected works from the 1st & 2nd Athens Biennales
Away and Boil your Head" curated by XYZ The Athens Biennale is proud to announce the opening of "Away and Boil your Head", curated by XYZ, selected works from the 1st & 2nd Athens Biennales, on July 9th 2010, in Fondazione Puglisi Cosentino, Palazzo Valle, Catania. "Away and Boil your Head" is presented within the project "OTHERS: Mediterranean views on contemporary art. The biennials of art of Marrakech, Istanbul, Athens in Palermo and Catania". The exhibition includes works by Alexis Akrithakis, John Bock,Savvas Christodoulides, Lydia Dambassina, Peter Dreher,Electronic Voice Phenomena, Tadeusz Kantor, Em Kei,Joachim Koester, Lotte Konow Lund, Mark Manders, Domenico Mangano, Nina Papaconstantinou, Ioannis Savvidis, Christoph Schlingensief, Gregor Schneider, and Ettore Sottsass. "We now find ourselves" say XYZ "in this place as curators, while selecting works for this exhibition in Catania from the 1st and the 2nd Athens Biennale, conscious that we are on our way to completing an exhibition trilogy in 2011;
but also as individuals, living in a country where everything feels suspended, banished in limbo. There is no sin other than the original one: bankruptcy. From Destroy Athens, the first biennale, to Heaven, the second one, there extends a conceptual strand that we intend to stretch even further – to our third edition. This is the ongoing struggle of the subject against the dead-ends that appear in his/her path, as part of the collective identity he or she belongs to. In the first Biennale we examined this quite simple proposition as a linear but syncopated narrative in six chapters, contrasting the personal journey of a subject with his/her sense of history and place and ended up on the personal level, wher e the political is felt as an absolutely private, incommunicable conflict. In the second biennale, we invited seven curators, Nadja Argyropoloulou, Diana Baldon, Christopher Marinos, Chus Martinez, Dimitris Papaioannou & Zafos Xagoraris, and Cay Sophie Rabinowitz, to begin where we left off, after  "Away and Boil Your Head" | Selected works from the 1st & 2nd Athens Biennales | An exhibition curated by XYZ, within the project "OTHERS: Mediterranean views on contemporary art. The biennials of art of Marrakech, Istanbul, Athens in Palermo and Catania" | July 9th – November 7th 2010 | Fondazione Puglisi Cosentino, Palazzo Valle, Via Vittorio Emanuele, 122 Catania "OTHERS" is an initiative of the "The Cities of the Mediterranean" project, which, from 2010 to 2012, will involve some of the major cities of the Mediterranean in activities and events that represent the identities and the production, economic, cultural, and art systems of the Mediterranean. "The Cities of the Mediterranean" is a project promoted by Palazzo Riso and the Fondazione Campania dei Festival, through an agreement between the Sicilian Region, Campanian Region, the Ministry for Economic Development (MISE). XYZ would like to thank the artists of both editions of the Athens Biennale, as well as the curators of the 2nd Athens Biennale 2009; everybody at Palazzo Riso and Palazzo Valle; the lenders of the exhibitions; and as always the Athens Biennale team. Atene a Catania Away and Boil your Head CATANIA |
