The work Why Look At Animals? Agrimiká with which Maria Papadimitriou represents Greece in the 56th Biennale of Venice re-examines the relationship between man and animal in a contemporary condition.

The exhibition poses some broader issues around cruelty and the present time, the culture of ruins and the ‘savage thought,’ the diffusion of fear and political allegory. It is a kind of microcosm that reflects the real world where a sense of threat and increasing violence prevails. It is an exhibition about life and about re-examining art. The bestial appears at the threshold of an impending transformation. In the desolate landscape of the pavilion man reencounters the animal on equal terms, in a primordial condition. The ‘beast’ under constant pursuit becomes the vehicle for a contemporary narrative. The work thus functions as an allegory for the resisting beast that refuses to become a possession.

The project of Maria Papadimitriou incorporates elements left behind from previous shows. The displacement of an espace trouv., in this case a time-forsaken hide processing shop, a workshop for “Agrimiká,” is the cornerstone of a work which keeps open the possibility of a social and cultural restart. Inside the pavilion the gesture of the violent dissection of space attempts to trigger an instinct of resistance against the decline that surrounds us.

Efie Falida