19. Body English
Steffani Jemison, Chrysanthi Koumianaki
Art Athina 2018
Athens Conservatoire, Athens GR
20 – 24 June
Images / Text
Our ability to locate ourselves amongst the unfamiliar through symbols, music, and architecture is mostly predicated on our participation in specific ‘western’ norms that distill space into an agreed ‘lingua franca’.
Life patterns are choreographed physically and digitally through this aggregate of corporate dominion, capital investment, and social adaptation, but remain buffeted by resistance from those marginalized by power. Any planner’s autocratic designs––as Robert Moses or Georges-Eugène Haussmann––face the contention of their intended communities, who have always adapted their own languages to navigate and thrive in defiance of the historical canon.
In Body English, two artists put their linguistic experiments into conference, framed by Art Athina’s architectural context within a noted conservatory for music and dance.
Steffani Jemison collaborates with musicians in examining Solresol, an utopian language developed in part by Jean-François Sudre in the 1800s. A simplified vocabulary built around the tones in a musical octave, Solresol was temporarily lost due to contemporary restrictions on teaching the deaf. Jemison endeavours to understand the failures of modern attempts at trans-national communication, and revisit the ways invented language is used throughout history to resist racial oppression.
Chrysanthi Koumianaki responds to human movement within cities in her structures and symbols, in order to build new language from its foundations. By identifying new parts of speech, she questions from / to whom or what is communicated, rather than repeating an assignment of codes to existing known entities. Her systems, often structured as conversations, draw out ‘action-phrases’ from their participant viewers rather than signify precise ideologies.
The artists are paired with the assistance of Greek curator Myrto Katsimicha, and share a single space in a revisitation of the ‘one room, two artists, three days’ concept motivating Syndicate’s first nomadic exhibitions in London from 2012-13.
Steffani Jemison (*1981, Berkeley, California, USA) is based in Brooklyn. An artist, musician, and poet, she has shown in numerous international institutions including Jeu de Paume, CAPC Bordeaux, the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, Studio Museum Harlem, The Drawing Center, LAXART, the New Museum, the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art, Bridget Donahue, Laurel Gitlen, Team Gallery, and others. Her work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum, MoMA, the Brooklyn Museum, Studio Museum Harlem, and the Kadist Foundation. Jemison is the 2017-18 Mildred Londa Weisman Fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
Chrysanthi Koumianaki (*1985, Heraklion, Greece) is based in Athens. Her practice investigates the idea of translation, creating symbolic systems, ciphers and alphabets focusing on a non verbal communication. Her recent solo projects include ‘They Keep Chewing Walls’ at Netwerk Aalst, BE and ‘Chroachym’ at Mentis, Benaki Museum, Athens GR; plus shows at Kadist, Paris FR; Danske Grafikeres Hus, Copenhagen, DK; EMST, Athens GR; DESTE Foundation, GR; Prada Foundation, IT; and State of Concept, Athens. In collaboration with Kosmas Nikolaou and Paky Vlassopoulou, Koumianaki is a co-founder of the artist-run space 3 137 since 2012.