Brave New World

Utopias seem more feasible than what we used to think. And we are confronted today with a much more agonizing question: how do we avoid their final realization?… Utopias are feasible. Life leads to utopias. Maybe a new century begins, a century in which the order of the learned and the intellectuals will envisage ways to avoid utopias and ways to return to a non-utopian society, less perfect and freer. Nikola Berdiaef (Preface to the first edition of Brave New Word, 1932 by Aldous Huxley.)

Brave New World starts a new period of exhibitions and events at Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Centre. Fully renovated, the space is ready to host this exhibition of works by female artists from Greece and abroad.

The Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Centre first opened in 1988. After fifteen creative years, the Art Centre enters now a new era, and its founder, Ileana Tounta, "looks on the future, reflecting on the past":

"By looking at my records, the exhibitions and the artists I worked with, I noticed a significant change: I started working with a group of mostly male artists and only few female. Today, the majority of the artists I work with are women. What does this gradual -over the last 15 years- change mean to me? It means that the work of female artists no longer fights for a "place in the sun", as it did during the 60s-80s, mainly within the feminist movement, but that it has established its self-reliance and equality in the art world. This is probably why many works that excite me and surprise me today are now more than ever works made by women.

Thus I had no choice but to dedicate this first exhibition to female artists. All the more because I like to believe that this new century will bring out a Brave New World, during which the active contribution of women will give people the possibility to live and create in a "non-utopian society, less perfect and freer", so that the old threatening utopias prove less feasible in the years to come. So that Huxley's wish, which reviews his pessimistic vision in the preface to the second edition of his book (1946), can be fulfilled:

I do not have today the slightest wish to prove that sound judgment is impossible. On the contrary, although I still am as drearily certain as in the past that sound judgment is a rather rare phenomenon, I am convinced that it is feasible and would like to see more of it. Aldous Huxley, 1946 Pressetext

Brave New World

mit Hilde Aagaard, Martha Dimitropoulou, Ayse Erkmen, Alicia Framis, Maria Friberg, Dara Friedman, Susy Gomez, Lina Theodorou, Lila Cambani, Sofia Kosmaoglou, Maro Michalakakos, Frini Mouzakitou, Lia Nalbantidou, Aliki Palaska, Egle Rakauskaite, Ene-liis Semper, Simone Rondelet, Rosemarie Trockel, Katerina Christidi, Eleni Christodoulou