Niki Kanagini’s Trilogy – Female Angels signals her turn to the use of new media, introducing videography as a documentary and performative tool. Through the use of video footage and photographic stills, Kanagini investigates the position of women with regard to society, sexuality, and physical violence. Women are shown facing down societal, physical, and psychological violence (at times latent, at others blatant), while openly-expressed sexuality is often accompanied by a sense of shame.
In the trilogy’s first two parts, Red Lights and Sensuality, Kanagini works with photographic shots of the actress Amalia Moutousi performing in the 1996 stage work Romanticism (directed by Michail Marmarinos and presented at Diplous Eros Theatre) to explore expressions of physicality and sexuality. Part three, titled Circumcision, concerns female genital mutilation performed on young African women as a rite during wedding preparations, bringing both violence committed against the body and societal control over the body to the fore. The trilogy was first presented in 2003 as part of a broader installation curated by theatre theorist and art critic Eleni Varopoulou for the 4th Summer Academy organised by the National Theatre of Greece at the Museum of Palaiopolis – Mon Repos on the island of Corfu.
