Loukia Nikolaidou: stories
Exhibition curation: Christina Lambrou
Assistant curators: AnnaMaria Charalambous, Kyriakos Theocharous
Focusing on the agency and visibility of female artists in Greek Cypriot modernity, the L. Economou Foundation presents the exhibition «Loukia Nikolaidou: stories» at the Garage Art Space, from the 25th of September 2020.
The exhibition brings to the public a selection of works by the pioneer Cypriot artist Loukia Nikolaidou (1909-1994). Throughout her work, Nikolaidou would often turn the gaze of her female figures to face the viewer: no longer subjects observed for the pleasure of the eye, her figures became the observers. The selection presented in the exhibition brings together works from this thematic group and explores new narratives.
Nikolaidou returned to Cyprus, from her studies at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux- Arts in Paris, in 1933 and went on to exhibit her work three times in rapid succession: in 1934, in the space of an apartment in Stoa Papadoloulou in Faneromeni, Nicosia, in 1935 at Club “Enosi” in Limassol, and in 1936 at “Gallery 271” again in Limassol. Her efforts, however, were met with indifference by the public, and a year after her last show, in 1937, she moved to London. By the 1950s she had gradually withdrawn from painting and did not return to Cyprus as a painter again.
While her Greek Cypriot contemporaries focused their interest on symbolic representations of women, often shown as farmers or mothers, Nikolaidou turned toward representations of real women rendering their character, their personality, their presence. We might imagine Nikolaidou’s dedication to her female portraits as a subtle, subversive act of provocation. This contextualises her within a discourse much wider than the collection of circumstances that defined her work: her gender, her class, her nationality.
The exhibition at Garage, develops around the idea of visibility–the chance for the works to meet the public–re-examining the way in which Nikolaidou’s work is perceived today. The artistic activity of Nikolaidou is examined through this lens: the direct gaze of female faces claiming visibility and noting absences from the eclectic canons of modern painting in Cyprus.
Publication: Three contemporary writers, Alexandra Manglis, Maria Petrides and Consantia Soteriou were invited to observe details, motions, and elements from the selection of works by Nikolaidou shown in the exhibition. Their stories are constructed through fragments of information from Nikolaidou’s works and existing stories. Literature, as an alternative to the traditional, historical, analytical approaches to the work of art, can change the narrative and facilitate possibilities for -no longer one single history, but a multiplicity of stories.
Suggesting new viewpoints, the exhibition opens the works to new readings aiming to contribute to the discussion of subjects that remain relevant today, like inclusion or exclusion and the claim to space and visibility, both in the visual presentation of the works as well as in their narration.
Brief CV
Loukia Nikolaidou was born in Limassol, Cyprus, in 1909. Between 1929 and 1933 she studied at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris, at the studio of Lucien Simon. In Paris, she participated in the Salon d’ Automne of 1932. She returned to Cyprus in 1933 and presented three exhibitions of her work, in 1933 at Megaro Papadoloulou (Nicosia), in 1935 at Club Enosos (Limasol), and in 1936 at Gallery 217 (Limassol). In 1937, she moved to London where she participated in an exhibition at Leger Galleries, in 1939. She gradually withdrew from painting by the 1950s. A retrospective of her paintings was presented in 1992 at the State Gallery in Nicosia. She died in England in 1994. Today, her works are held in private collections, the State Gallery in Cyprus, the collection of Bank of Cyprus, and the Leventis Gallery in Nicosia.
