The feeling of sacrosanct, of cult as action, as embodied participation, all these become points of reference for Nikolaou’s work. Viewers become in a way, participants in a ceremony where intellect, logic and feeling converge, and come in touch, through the mediation of visual configurations, with the notion of ceremonial celebration and real myths, which are real because they don’t pretend to be real, or pragmatist -as ubiquitous social myths nowadays do.
Her dynamic and at the same time ethereal sculptural constructions convey a playful, celebratory and Dionysian even, feeling. They allude to paganistic cults, arborolatry/dendrolatry (worship of trees), investigating notions relevant to the human attribute of sanctity upon natural elements.
Revisiting the notion of mythical through artistic means has great importance in an era of confusion (or fusion for the same matter) of the logical with the illogical at a social level, as irrational choices are often seen and presented (conveniently for some) as the unavoidable consequences of the concurrent conditions – be them social, economic or cultural. The ambient post-modern mythology draws its power from the power of those who establish it as such. In a nutshell, culturally, socially and economically most people (in the ‘West’) live an irrational situation which claims for itself to be the logical result of rational thinking while this very situation is being structured precisely in the way myths and cults do. In such a juncture there is even more merit in revisiting the very roots of the ‘sacrosanct’ as a notion, as feeling and as a significant encounter, by using the means that only art can offer.
Her dynamic and at the same time ethereal sculptural constructions convey a playful, celebratory and Dionysian even, feeling. They allude to paganistic cults, arborolatry/dendrolatry (worship of trees), investigating notions relevant to the human attribute of sanctity upon natural elements.
Revisiting the notion of mythical through artistic means has great importance in an era of confusion (or fusion for the same matter) of the logical with the illogical at a social level, as irrational choices are often seen and presented (conveniently for some) as the unavoidable consequences of the concurrent conditions – be them social, economic or cultural. The ambient post-modern mythology draws its power from the power of those who establish it as such. In a nutshell, culturally, socially and economically most people (in the ‘West’) live an irrational situation which claims for itself to be the logical result of rational thinking while this very situation is being structured precisely in the way myths and cults do. In such a juncture there is even more merit in revisiting the very roots of the ‘sacrosanct’ as a notion, as feeling and as a significant encounter, by using the means that only art can offer.