Hosted in Athens
Opening Tuesday 22 May 18.00
23 May-29 May from 18.30 to 21.30
Organized by: Daily Lazy Projects
Collective/ Artist group: SKOUZE3 & Spazi Docili
Show title: TraitsArtists/ Participants: Eva Marathak i(GR), Leontios Toumpouris (CYP), Christian Costa (IT), Fabrizio Ajello (IT)
Space: 
SKOUZE3, Eva Marathaki, Leontios Toumpouris
The works Closed Circuit (video, duration: 1min 27 sec), I22082008 and I29042008, have as a starting point a characteristic of the artists' faces (the mouth in Eva Marathaki's work and the beard in Leontios Toumpouris' work).In the video Closed Circuit, the mouth is trying to sing but in vain. It cannot escape the limited space of its existence. In his works, Leontios Toumpouris reveals the "other" side of the beard, as a characteristic that defines or confines him.
Spazi Docili, Christian Costa, Fabrizio Ajello
The former Sant'Orsola Monastery, in the very centre of Florence, is a pivotal place for our project. This medieval building, closed for decades, has been completely destroyed in the last few years in an attempt to adapt its architectural structure to some kind of unidentified modern function.
Arches were squared, frescos covered with plaster, the structure (made of stone) strengthened with steel and cement. In the courtyard, an unfinished underground car park is still sadly open and flooded with rain. Even the windows were walled up to make the building inaccessible and its interiors un-viewable.
This situation turned the area into a dangerous one, distressing the whole Quarter. Crime and drug pushing have become regular activities in the empty surrounding streets. The people have been complaining for years with great energy.
One of our most important actions was the construction of a Saint Ursula (Sant'Orsola) statue. We decided to give a tangible form to people's discontent and, at the same time, to draw attention to the building, asking the people of the Quarter to help make a real statue of the Saint from scratch.
The reaction was overwhelming: people helped by giving us all the materials we needed and by taking an important part in the construction of the work.
Once we finished we improvised a procession with the statue, taking it around the Monastery and into the nearby San Lorenzo Market. We took inspiration from the popular religious traditions that are still alive in the Mediterranean part of Italy but not often used in Central and Northern Italy. The response was, once more, incredible: people began to kneel down on the street, to pray and to follow the procession and this 'statue-fetish'. We succeeded in turning a religious-aesthetic form into a civic-political form.
