Opening on December 9 at Diatopos Gallery, I Land, the third solo exhibition of Greek Cypriot artist Melita Couta, is presenting the cartography of an improbable land. The artist is using several media, among them a series of drawings, ink on paper, in which tenuous and innumerable lines intermingle skillfully, spread their plait in various shades, and bring to our mind the memory of Atopos, a non-existing place. You can visit the exhibition up until January 15, 2010.
This paradoxical nature of the topos also appears in the sculptures toy can see in the exhibition. Life-size humanlike figures, mythological inhabitants of the hypothetical lands are dissected by surfaces, penetrated by voids or trapped by furniture-like structures. What happens when a faun is cut at the waist by an IKEA desk? How does the movement of an oversized pendulum, endlessly repeated, complete six glass eyes that are peering on us? What is hidden under that long dress, worn by a headless woman, bristled with a grey scale of ribbons?
This installation states, somehow playfully and seriously, that like the territories we live in, we are hybrid by nature. And so are all our mapping processes.
This is where drawings and sculptures meet to show how, between space, body and territory, the frontiers are not impervious. Spaces you have been living in for years or passing through in haste, like rooms, buildings, cities, or countries, are carried carry with you for ever. Imaginary spaces of childhood, youth and maturity are no less present in each of your gestures. In return, these spaces are shaping and reshaping your body, modeling its form and content. Hence, they are no mere spaces. They are uncertain territories that demand for a recognition, sometimes for care. Notations of hypothetical lands, places, constellations, explosions, charts of possible movements and thoughts. Volatile yet anchored. Evanescent and yet inscribed.