Athens Museum of Cycladic Art presents a major exhibition of Cindy Sherman, the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in Greece.
The exhibition brings together more than 100 works, offering a comprehensive view into Sherman’s ground-breaking and influential early series exploring how women are imaged in popular culture, including Untitled Film Stills (1977-1980), Rear Screen Projections (1980), Centerfolds (1981) and Color Studies (1981-1982).
Sherman’s intersection of photography and performance in the late 1970s established her as an artistic pioneer. Working alone in her studio, she took on the roles of makeup artist, hairdresser, stylist and director, and transformed herself into the various characters depicted in her photography. Appropriating female images and stereotypes in television, film and advertising – such as the femme-fatale, career girl and housewife – Sherman’s work offers a critique of traditional gender roles and identity.
Throughout the exhibition, a twenty-minute segment on Cindy Sherman from the film Transformation, a 2009 Art21 production, will be screened. The segment surveys some of her untitled works and the creative process she has been following for more than forty years.
The presence of Sherman’s works under the same roof as the Museum’s collection of Cycladic art, one of the most complete private collections in the world, creates a link with the famous marble female figurines of the 3rd millennium BC, which dominate Cycladic art and have influenced the work of many 20th and 21st century artists. According to most scholars, these figurines represent the great mother-goddess of fertility and rebirth, the goddess who, over the years, changed her form as women did, assuming different and multiple roles. Roles that have been differentiated and redefined and contested; roles that have led to conflicts but which have always remained fundamental to the place of women, from antiquity to the present day.
The museum was initially founded in 1986 to house the collection of Nicholas and Dolly Goulandris. After that it accommodates new acquisitions, obtained either through direct purchases or through donations by important collectors and institutions.
Dedicated to the study and conservation of Cycladic, Ancient Greek and Cypriot art, the museum has a collection of more than 3.000 objects, with special emphasis on Cycladic Art of the 3rd millennium BC.
Until November 4th at Athens Museum of Cycladic Arts - Neophytou Douka street
Comments