International Open Call Exhibition with jury committee

Curator: Maria Paschalidou
Jurors: Adam Brooks | Eleftheria Lialios | Maria Paschalidou | Sabrina Raaf


The Ekecheiria international juried exhibition addresses notions of truce. The artists in this exhibition employ a variety of media from painting and photography to video and installation to create works, which act as a catalyst for the process of rethinking and reconsidering notions of peace. Their work has transformed the exhibition environment into a laboratory of thoughts, questions and ideas where fear and hope for fragile moments of peace are intertwined in dramatic and haunting fashion. Interpretations range from photographs of the cruellest reality from the absence of truce to humorous representations of a laundry-like news machine produced by global news media.

Military parachutes are transformed to art objects surrendering their functional meaning; while nationalism, ironically, appears as ‘cowboy’ or as an isolated and abandoned ancient landscape. Fictitious “masked attacks” mock and criticize the ‘historically’ justified rationale of massive assassinations. Large-scale photographic portraits of individuals stamped with their fingerprints identify the hysteria of the search for the ‘enemy’. Crutches, which frequently represent human vulnerability, are transformed into tools of strength. Ashes, stones and fire recall ancient rituals, perhaps ones that could re-ignite a contemporary pursuit of a sustained truce. These are just a handful of different perspectives in defining fragmented moments of truce. The power of art relies on its potential to transform ‘reality’, to reinforce a point of view and represent action. (Maria Paschalidou, Moments of truce, Ekecheiria catalogue, Chicago 2004, p.3)


PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:

Guido E. Alvarez | Michael Arrigo | Renee Mc Ginnis | Anni Holm | Georgia Kotretsos | Eleni Mylonas | Yuichiro Nishizawa | Camila Olarte | Janet Orselli | Damon Sauer | Susan E. Squires | Bernice Ficek – Swenson | Marjorie Vecchio | Julie Weitz | Elise Mc Williams | Peter Costas Yalanis

GRAPHIC DESIGN (exhibition catalogue and postcard): Yannis Lolis

EXHIBITIONS / PRESENTATIONS:

  • Schopf Gallery On Lake, Chicago, June 4 – July 9, 2004

PUBLICATIONS:

  • Ekecheiria exhibition catalogue. The Federation of Hellenic American Organizations of Illinois ENOSIS; World Council of Hellenes Abroad North & South America Region; the Chicago-Athens Committee of the Chicago Sister Cities International Program, Chicago, June 2004
  • Maria Paschalidou, “Ekecheiria: Fragmented Moments of Truce”. Ekecheiria exhibition catalogue, p.3