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| Leda Papaconstantinou Since the end of the ’60s –when she presented her first performances- up until today, Leda Papaconstantinou has been systematically working on decomposing and radically reappraising basic concepts including religiosity and eroticism, while very conspicuously seeking to intertwine the two with the human body. In her work Votive [a profoundly religious comment of unspecified dogma] of 1969, in the Private Structure and Ritual of the same year as well as in Bite of 1970, she markedly acknowledged her intention to build a new, heretic mythology that would be free from the imposed Christian-centered and European-centered narratives on permitted ways of expressing sexuality and the respective practices of suppression and limit-setting In reminiscence of the atmosphere of that time, Sally Potter assesses the courage of the performative acts presented by Leda: “The enormous crosses reminded one of the crosses throughout the entire history of Christianity; yet, as they were made of plastic they seemed almost distasteful and violently adapted to the twentieth century. In conjunction with the naked bodies, they brought an air of blasphemy with them. This was a dangerous field, an aspiring and ambitious one” 1. Leda Papaconstantinou’s work belongs historically to the most pioneering and innovative proposals to extend the expressive limits of the body in the art of performance. In Votive, the shape of the cross delineates the ceremonial symbolism of the naked female body through the male performer and it reappears in the segmentation of the fruit as a structural component of this conception. The work implies, by way of mild allegorical and poetic means, the material dimension of erotic contact, fertility and fruit bearing without however descending to merely descriptive narratives. In 2005, Marina Abramovic presented her work Balkan Erotic Epic, a product of meticulous research on the functions of eroticism in the popular culture of the Balkans ever since the 16th century up until today. With a style and layout marked by academic decorum she explains how reproductive organs were used as a means to prevent illnesses, natural disasters and external attacks. In the course of a difficult childbirth, the man would make the sign of cross with his phallus on the woman’s chest in order to protect her from the dangers of giving birth to a child, while men would masturbate on the soil in seeking to increase the fertility of their land. The scenes are described and then dramatized. The work triggered a host of responses, both positive and negative, and fuelled the old debate about the relation between art – pornography. By virtue of her outstanding skills in the field of performance, Marina Abramovic ‘cashed out’ the charming influence exercised on the western gaze by the ‘crude’, ‘primitive’ Balkan mother of civilization. Leda Papaconstantinou, decades earlier, using much simpler conceptual means, managed to transform her body into a canvas for artistic creation, without succumbing to show off attempts, reproductions of cliché representations and projection of ‘local peculiarities’. That is why, I believe, her work is marked by a courageous and at the same time profoundly decent treatment of the body, as a new field for the sacred with a universal content. Syrago Tsiara __________ 1 Sally Potter, ‘Leda’s performances’, Leda Papaconstantinou, Performance, Film, Video 1969 – 2004, Cube Editions, Athens 2005, p. 16  Download CV |  Votive |
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