Pot Man, 2011
From the Tahrir Square series
Oil on canvas
Box Man, 2011
From the Tahrir Square series
Oil on canvas
ΕΜΣΤ Collection
Donated by the artist 2016
Cone Man, 2011
Styrofoam Man, 2011
From the Tahrir Square series
Oil on paper
Long-term loan from the artist
The intrinsic conflict between the cultures that we identify as East and West is at the heart of Eleni Mylonas’s practice. The portraits that make up the series titled Tahrir Square are based on a set of news photos the artist came across in the early days of the Arab Spring—the 2011 uprisings of peoples across the Mediterranean—showing demonstrators in Cairo’s Tahrir Square donning inventive, homemade, protective headgear. “I was intrigued and amused by the creativity and humour of these self-improvised helmets, born from a real need to protect one’s head, and I identified with the demonstrators. I was captivated by the humanity of those images and the stories they tell,” notes the artist, who went on to translate them first into graphite drawings and later into a series of paintings presented here. The series reflects the resilience and determination of the protesters, not with pathos or overstated drama, but with a radical kind of humour.
Mylonas captures the ingenuity and survival instinct of protesters in Egypt during the fierce uprisings and social unrest that reshaped the geopolitical landscape of the broader Middle East and North Africa region between 2010 and 2011. As the artist characteristically notes, “Against the contemporary backdrop of geopolitical upheaval, I find myself inhabiting many disparate roles. I embrace them all. I am the protester in Tahrir Square, the photographer taking the picture, and the artist inspired by it. As the world grows smaller, Art stands at the forefront of non-verbal communication, and artists are the messengers of this awareness.”
Eleni Mylonas was born in Athens in 1944. She lives and works between New York and Aegina Island, Greece.
