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Anna Laskari to represent Greece in Caracas' 1st Biennale of South

Greek artist Anna Laskari's "Left of the Parthenon" was chosen to represent Greece at the the Biennale of South, which will take place in Caracas, Venezuela under the title I Bienal del Sur: Pueblos en Resistencia (First Biennale of South: People in Resistance) in the period between November 1, 2015 and February 28, 2016.

Greece is the only southern European country participating in the program, in will which feature 100 artists from 40 countries.


The work is a 3D animation produced exclusively for the Biennale of South, and symbolically depicts an image of suffering and hardship from the ongoing crisis on Greece, a country that some political quarters charged was used as a "guinea pig" for the implementation of neo-liberal policies of austerity and also the resistance of the people.


According to the artist, “one could potentially add to the ‘labels’, which always represented the image of Greece, some new ones. Thus, on the side of emblematic terms like the ‘Parthenon’, the ‘Acropolis’ , or ‘cradle of Democracy’, new predicates are added, such ‘insecurity’, ‘fear’, ‘anger’, ‘social turmoil’, communal and alternative practices of solidarity’.
In the 2 minutes of its duration, the 3D animation shows the panic of a cat, trapped on a balcony of a closed office somewhere in the commercial center of Athens. The cries of the cat, which initially revealed her despair, are gradually escalated to a threatening roar, staring insistently the spectator, who although no participating to the drama he can’t help not to be moved by it. Finally, the cat disappears, leaving an encapsulating, trapping, emptiness, a void.

The organization of the Biennale was an initiative of Venezuela’s Ministry of Popular Power and is materialized under the auspices of the Institute of Representational and Spatial Arts (IARTES). The objective of this ambitious international event is to bring together creative people from the southern hemisphere, but also of a South transcending any notion of  geographical border, with the scope of building a common space to communicate their desires, their dreams and their needs.

According to Biennale’s curator Morella Jurado, IARTES’ general director, this common field could work as an artistic platform for a fruitful exchange of “political experiences and new aesthetic proposals in the view of building a common battlefront, outside the commercial rings and forging its own character”.