Circuit, 1974
Copper and bakelite
Grid, 1970
Plexiglas and colour
Grid, 1970
Plastic slides, plexiglas, metallic clipper
Grid, 1970
Plastic slides, plexiglas, metallic clipper
ΕΜΣΤ Collection
Donated by Zafos Xagoraris, 2002
Bia Davou’s practice is dynamically situated within the artistic explorations of the 1970s, focusing on communication between the artist and the audience, emphasising the process of production, and redefining the art object itself. Between 1967 and 1970, Davou introduced the grid as a fundamental organisational tool. The grid functioned not merely as a drawing support but as a structural system that determined the composition of the work and the relationships between its individual elements. During the same period, while working on her Meshes series, she explored new materials and new ways of organising three-dimensional space, emphasising processes of systematisation and analytical structuring of the image. In her next body of work, Flowcharts, Davou employed elements of the technical language of flowcharts (the logical processes of computational machines, indicating beginning, end, progression, and sequences of commands). The artist noted that, “Flowcharts exist before language. They are the logical sequence of thought. Circuits are the material component that triggers the function.”
Davou’s artistic practice is directly linked to cybernetics and to communication theories of her time, exploring the flow, feedback, and organisation of information. “The entire body of work I’ve been exhibiting over the past three years stems from the awe and fascination I felt for flowcharts (the organisational diagrams that schematically describe a computer’s logical process) as well as from my intense desire to explore the meanings they conceal. […] I wanted to explore their expressive potential,” she remarked. Starting from the technological language of computers and the principles of cybernetics regarding human-machine communication, Davou devised a rigorous, predetermined system for the rationalised, non-hierarchical development of the artwork, one that is capable of self-organising and expanding indefinitely on its own.
Bia Davou was born in 1932. She died in Athens in 1996.
