Projects 96: Haris Epaminonda

Epaminonda is internationally known for her photographic assemblages constructed from found books and magazines of the 1960s, and for her video installations, in which television footage culled from Greek soap operas that she used to watch as a child on Sunday afternoons in Cyprus, are reshot and re–edited in new sequences, creating a web of elusive associations. This exhibition presents Epaminonda's three–channel video installation Tarahi IIII, V, VI (2007), part of an ongoing series that enlists the use of reverse shooting, montage, cuts, superimposition, and repetition of motifs to address the permeability of memory.

"Tarahi translates from Greek as 'turmoil'," explains Roxana Marcoci, Curator, Department of Photography, The Museum of Modern Art, "and through the artist's use of ellipsis, narrative ruptures, collage, experimentation with intensified colors, and disjunctive film speeds, the work is invested with surreal appeal."

A woman facing the theatrical folds of a stage curtain, a couple strolling backwards on a sun–drenched path, a pomaded man with a microphone looking to the sky while a firework appears on his face, a bleached–out sun overtaking the image; these are just a few of the eerie images in Epaminonda's Tarahi videos.

A single soundtrack of piano chords culled from Sonata No. 10 by Russian composer Alexander Skrjabin provides the acoustic link between the three alternating video projections. Favoring a slowed–down, filmic flow and lush colors, these enigmatic videos are presented in the context of sculptural and architectural structures—antique statuettes, vases, columns, pedestals, and niches—in an all–encompassing installation specifically conceived for MoMA, the overall effect being that of a three–dimensional audio–visual collage in the gallery.

Projects 96:
Haris Epaminonda
Kurator: Roxana Marcoci