Balkanart07, Novi Sad, Serbia

Presentation of Trauma Queen exhibition

The art director of Balkanart 07, Sava Stepanov, invited the curators of the contemporary art exhibition Trauma Queen to present the show and its concept in the context of the central exhibition that took place in the museum of contemporary art in Novi Sad, Serbia.
Part of the central exhibition titled “Transition and Art – Art in Transition” was dedicated to alternative art projects in the Balkans. As Sava Stepanov explained “the natural context of the work of art (both in terms of concept and idea) is not anymore the gallery space, but street and mass media; moreover, the final ‘message’ of art creations flows from the relation of the work of art and its social context”.
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Invited artists - curators of the Trauma Queen show
Harris Kondosphyris, Zoi Pappa
Video presentation (TQ-4 Novi Sad)
Manos Kornelakis

Trauma Queen took place in Athens from September 7 till the end of October 2007. 26 artists from different cultural backgrounds participated with works that for the most part had been produced specially for the exhibition in a wide range of media: painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, installations and video.
The artists exposed their “traumas” and in the process of organizing the expression of personal negative experience they came to illuminate its reverse side of social prejudice and collective shortcoming as they stand today; most importantly, their work contributed perspectives of human resilience in the face of distress.
The event was hosted in an independent space, in Omonoia Square in the heart of Athens, that was kindly offered by its owner. The choice of an independent space was not incidental. On the contrary, it corresponded to a need for autonomous art activity, freedom of expression and independence from the standard structure of the art authority. Our aim was to create an alternative space where different points of view could be heard.
Omonoia Square is the crossroads of permanent meetings, an interim shelter and passage for a variety of human types, mostly minorities, the vast number of which are carrying open or hidden “traumas”. The exhibition space was an abandoned hotel in the red light district; more specifically, it was a 700m2 three-storey building of eclectic style with art deco elements, which, until recently, had been used as a hotel (Mediterranean).
In the process of reopening this space, the shell of the old hotel was once more to awaken and engage in conversation with other “shells” implanted in an area that had its moment of urban splendour and has been through all the stages of social transformation.
As concerns the interior, the walls of each floor had been demolished and the space was indiscrete. However, one could easily “recognize” the old floor plan of the building by the “woods” in the walls and the floor. All these made it an ideal place for the realization of the exhibition as it offered itself a genuine comment on the traumatic experience.
Through their work, the artists became involved with the derelict building as if it were a living organism and managed to reincarnate in the actual space what traces and memories persisted in a state of suspension.
We inhabited the Mediterranean hotel, consciously seeing it as a metaphor of the museum, an alive museum taken from the dormant viscera of the city organism and given back to the citizens as art that derives from society; art as a manual of life rather than a commodity simply using up gallery space.
Given the difficulty of funding for independent art productions, Trauma Queen adopted a “fair-trade” policy. We made an attempt at introducing in Greece the notion of fair-trade collaboration among all participating artists; within a framework of close cooperation and exchange, we wanted to enhance intercultural contact and trust, promoting new independent forms of organization for art events. In the Trauma Queen exhibition “egos” had to undergo dispersion and expansion to become "we" and assume hence collective responsibility.

Participant artists in "Trauma Queen":
Nikolas Arvanitis, Martin Bruch, KyungRan Ban, Alex Charrington, Yiannis Chiotopoulos, FinnFemFel (Albert Braun, Marcus Lerviks, Oskar Lindström), Karin Frank, Bern Roche Farrelli, Dimitris Halatsis, Ben Jeans Houghton, Richard Jochum, Harris Kondosphyris, Manos Kornelakis, Dong Yeop Lee, Maria Lianou, Ioanna Mirka, Aphrodite Désirée Navab, Maria Nymfiadi, Zoi Pappa, Lea Petrou, Richard Riggs, Christian Rupp, Ioanna Sahini, Dagmar Streiche, Peter Wehinger, Alex Zika.

(*In Balkanart07 in Novi Sad, Lina Theodorou is participating on behalf of Greece).