9 July - 14 August 2022
Tombazis Mansion, annex of the Athens School of Fine Arts in Hydra
"Les Sirènes étaient des femmes oiseaux!” is a duo exhibition featuring recent works by Lito Kattou. The exhibition takes place at HYAM Projects on the Greek island of Hydra.
In The Odyssey, the Sirens were female birds with angelic faces and eagle bodies, dangerous seductresses who sang to Odysseus before trading their wings for fishtails and the watery world below. Hybrid beings, witnesses of this eternal ambivalence, they have endlessly infiltrated popular mythology, steered by vice and virtue. Today, the concept of hybridization asserts itself more pragmatically and broadly in both personal and societal spheres. We no longer posit “either/or”; instead we say “and.” Lito Kattou’s hybrid creatures mix the human with the divine, fauna with flora, highlighting this vital need to adapt to new environmental challenges through mutation and—by extension—innovation. In dialogue with the Cypriot artist Lito Kattou’s flat sculptures, Anne-Charlotte Finel’s videos highlight the in-between, the interstices, the non-demarcated intermediate spaces where any metamorphosis can occur.
The relationship and interaction between technology and nature is, for me, a serious subject to study as well as a challenge. I think this topic will further develop as we come to understand nature’s responses to climate change with more accuracy—and whether or not technologies are able to keep up with it.” - Lito Kattou