Have you ever measured the distance between your kidneys and the wall, or the floor, and how that shifts as you inhabit a space? Have you ever thought of your digestive system in relation to your view from a beautiful place on a Mediterranean island? Have you ever considered the existence of a place between your anus and your genitals, which has a name by the way, and how it stands in relation to the edge of a room?
This selection of works departs from a longstanding investigation of the human body, as an object, site, and landscape that exists within other objects, sites, and landscapes. The work suggests fragmentation as a way to relate to ourselves, our bodies and the world around us. In Omento (2018), for example, the anatomical structure called Omentum and the Abdominal Cavity that contains it have been magnified and abstracted into elements of landscape and architecture.
My practice as a whole examines what connects individuals to specific places and employs performance, photography, and sculpture to investigate how those become sites of memory, legend, and trauma. A few more examples:
My brother’s perineal region and the corner of a destroyed room (2018), is a photograph taken in an abandoned village, located on the military division line in Cyprus – where I was born, and grew up. It’s held on the wall by an object made of a concrete, a construction iron bar, a ceramic impression of my brother’s perineal region coated in silicone, and a cloth that I used to wipe the entire studio floor.
Untitled topography of my brother I & II (2017), is made of fragments of my brother’s genitals and hands. The clay was hand-pressed into moulds by me. The objects on one side have my fingerprints and on the other side the imprint of his body. The work shifts between earthenware covered in graphite and raw clay.
Weaving (Untitled) (2017), I built a loom from memory using the frame of my old bed. I weaved the anatomy of my prostate and colon using string and plastic wrapping. My grandmother used to be a weaver making yarn from scratch and turning it into fabric. As a child, I found the whole process fascinating, but I was not allowed to do any of it because I was a boy.
Yorgos Petrou