Statement

Allegories are symbolic figures which identify ideas and give to the abstraction a face, an expression, a position, a costume which reveals the meaning. Victory has wings, Death is a skeleton with scythe, when Spring is surrounded by flowers. The Allegory can freeze the temporality of an idea, like the gold fleece, the holy grail, the “immortal" water, or the Spring of Youth.

The Greek mythology humanizes everything, the muse, the grace, the winds. The Gods give form and behavior to all the main powers of the universe. In the Greek national anthem Freedom, exhausted, poor but full of courage lives her life of a constant struggle. An empire holds a specter and democracy wears on her head laurel leaves, war wears black and red symboling ash and blood. But what happens when a symbolism goes beyond the extreme of its meaning.

The title of the Mykonos Biennale 2017 is Trans-Allegoria. It raises (and answers) the question of the capacity of Art to initiates, introduce and captivate. Art which transforms energy into creation and creation into life.
The saga of the Great Ideas, at the transcendental Island that changes everyone into something new, something that discovers only in place.

Lydia Venieri
Athens 2014