In her work, the London-based Greek artist, Rania Bellou examines the relationship between the viewer and the artwork in terms of spatial representation and narrative. As the artist claims, “the duality between transparency/glass, reflection/mirror and absence/presence has become a recurrent theme in my work. Through my experimental video installations I play with the visuals and sounds as traces of memories that come to life”.
The exhibition of Rania Bellou will feature, among other works, pencil drawings on multiple layers of tissue paper. Based on the Proustian model of subjective memory as a recreation of the past, the works ‘force’ the return to ‘personal’ memories. “Such a return though cannot be equal to a thorough recreation of a past situation but only through a ‘free’ journey among blurred and vague mental images with its intentional forgetfulness”.
The collection of the archival material is followed by their decomposition and re-composition into gossamer drawings which cover rather than uncover the material traces of photographic meetings, regaining and recreating a past. As Bellou states regarding the drawings at the show, “looking at the depicted strangers, the old fashioned clothes in contrast to their contemporary faces, listening to their voices, we are transferred to personal dark rooms waiting for the mystery that hides in their lives, to appear”.
Furthermore, the artist will present a new work which consists of long lost letters that reveal a torrid tale of repressed love in 1930s Egypt and England. The artist was inspired by a bundle of postcards and letters that she discovered in various flea markets and brought together in order to tell a love story of the hero who in one of the letters exhibited, dated in 06/02/1931, confesses “Every ounce of love in my heart belongs to you my beautiful little girl and always will do”.
The work ‘Between I and Me’ is a collection of texts with a very strong presence of the narrator and an even stronger absence of the receiver. The viewer is constantly confronted with the dilemma: is the text centered on the woman that the narrator idolized out of love or on the narrator himself?
About the Artist:
The Greek artist Rania Bellou graduated from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London in Scenography (M.A.) and from the School of Fine Arts at the Aristotelian University in Thessaloniki, Greece. She lives and works in London.
She has participated in various exhibitions and art festivals in Greece and abroad, such as in Albania, Switzerland, USA, Mexico and England. Recent exhibitions include: In 2011 a solo show at Kalfayan Galleries, Athens, a group exhibition at Ex-Teresa Museum of Contemporary Art in Mexico City and a group show at the National School for the Arts, Mexico City. In 2010 she exhibited at the 2nd Moscow International Biennale for Young Art titled ‘Qui Vive’, the LUCCADigitalPHOTOFest in Lucca Italy, KODRA International Festival Action Field KODRA 10 (10th Visual Arts Festival), Thessaloniki and at the ‘Oasis and A-oasis’ (group show) at the Skironio Museum Polychronopoulos in Greece, among other venues. In 2008 she won 1st Prize in a competition sponsored by the Yiannis and Zoe Spyropoulos Foundation. In 2009 she exhibited at the ‘Summer Exhibition’ of The Royal Academy of Arts in London, at the 2nd Thessaloniki Biennial of Contemporary Art (Exhibition: ‘1001+1 Praxis’). In the same year Kalfayan Galleries (Thessaloniki) presented her solo show titled ‘Living in a Cerebral Fortress’.
In 2012 she is a resident at Royal College of Art Sculpture (London), studio 60 : RCA (Richard Wentworth). Upcoming shows include: Moscow international Biennale for Young Art (2012). Rania Bellou is represented by Kalfayan Galleries, Athens – Thessaloniki.
