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Florentia Ikonomidou 'The cage' / Greece

When a child, I had seen the painting of a princess in a book. It was titled Infanta Margarita painted by D. Velasquez , detail. Until then I had a different picture of a princess in mind, sculptured by the fairy tales I had read and the classical comics of the times. The girl of the painting was wearing a dress, the bottom part of which resembled a cage of birds, while the top part appeared to be very tight. For this reason her arms were isolated from her body, like the two sides of a triangle with the head on the top. The golden ribbons that surrounded the tiny body seemed rather like chains.

In years that followed I saw in museums portraits of Margarita as a child and as a young woman, and I was greatly impressed by the freedom of the brush stroke of Velasquez..

I often refer in my work to the work of painters of the past. Perhaps in this way I try to rationalize this very element of their work that enchants and influences me.

I started with the drawings of the movement of a series of birds. Then I created the maiden by memory. What I had in mind was to create a motion-gravure that would offer a sequence of prints, almost as many as the created frames of motion. For this reason I drew flat forms, basically on black and white. I did not want the story to play a significant role, or at least not more significant than in my earlier work. In this way the animated drawing can be seen in circles, without a beginning, a middle or an end, and lasts as long as needed for one to observe any two dimensional art work, whether to stop in front of it, or by- pass it.

Printing was done on a cotton paper with special inks. While printing the frames I was lead to compositional interventions that shaped the final form of the animated drawing.

Dahlgren Ekonomides composed the musical score after the video animation was completed.The music is based on the blending of the sense of Baroque era with the modern day, thus creating an International reference to both the past and the present. The use of brief portions of an A. Scarlatti sonata, originally for harpsichord, creates a link to Velasquez’s days in Madrid. The subsequent use of a steadily recurring beat, as well as the mative to Baroque driving energy, evokes a parallel with the unfolding of time in life itself.

The cage | Project Lazaretta | Project Lazaretta

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