Dowry- Dolls
2006 – TinT Gallery,Thessaloniki, Grecce
by Lenio Papantonopoulou
Art historian
She notes:
“By unfolding a sheet in my workshop, I felt that a whole story, a fairy tale got unwrapped in front of me. This sheet and some of my old jumpers seemed to be carrying a story, and they seemed to be my only connection to my past. The spring of this idea is most probably by moving out. I suddenly found myself in a completely new space, in an environment filled with brand new These sheets were part of my old belongings that were transferred in my workshop. I started embroidering them, painting them, I started manufacturing and then photographing a dreamy world, a setting full of dolls, of princes and princesses, of knights.”
In this captivating atmosphere directed by Politi, the reality of the viewer’s experience is enriched by a fairy tale quality. She sews and paints her own sentimental geography and transforms the surfaces into mirrors of memory, into sensory projections stemming from vision, dream and fantasy. Just like treasured images, her dolls emerge and appear static and silent, fugitives escaping from time’s wear, parts of a narrative sequence. Politi makes her viewer face a personal reserve of icons that are implicit, without any lucid allusions. The environments that she creates and photographs, encircle her power, echo with her pursuit of identity. For Politi, the feminine identity is so fragile that seems to be hanging from a thread. Thread, threads are her tools, but in reality her works are made of memories and recollections, of cohesions and correlations. Mentions, repressed impulses and prospects, they all compose this rather persevering, although silent presentation that surmounts the visual formulation of inclinations and emotions. In substance, her works are a struggle to trap time into the present, time that through Politi’s work becomes subjective and its separate levels get transparent, blanketed and embraced by the power of feminine magic.