IN A CATHARTIC VEIN, a black-and-white focus on inner thoughts during the pandemic is being presented these days at FokiaNou Art Space. Artists Georgia Touliatou and Nina Kotamanidou (aka the ‘beheaded researchers’) have created an installation there which both harks back to the feminist work of Barbara Kruger, with its use of messages, but also includes crochet and embroidery, thus also  borrowing from a more feminine tradition. From misshapen human figures to giant sweets, the images presented certainly have an impact as does the dark irony often created via word-and-image combinations. The two-person show entitled ‘The beheaded researchers present: A crash course on inner reasoning”, runs till February 26.

The beheaded researchers spent the lockdown creating these works, and they certainly echo the reexamination of life as we know it, and the questions that procured from this process that many of us had undergone during the pandemic in general. Via their artistic process, these artists have externalized fragmented and repeated introverted thoughts as they are triggered by external conditions. Their work refers to their anxiety about indifference, ignorance and loneliness. In drawings and paintings, they address the contrast of a dream of a happy life with the difficulty of managing their theoretically favorable situation in a culture of abundance. Their research into A.S. Byatt’s ‘Identity and the Writer’, and the idea of the personality of the individual as a “knotted subject”, forms the basis for the simultaneous creation of several texts and embroideries, leading to a greater understanding of the concept of culture and social identity.

• Open Thurs-Sat 5-8pm at Fokianou Art Space (24 Fokianou Street, 7^th floor).