ELENI BAGAKI

By inverting the predominantly phallocentric approach to the female nude in the history of painting, Bagaki articulates her own understanding of pleasure and voyeuristic desire through the prism of female subjectivity and sexuality - Tina Pandi (Art historian and Curator at EMST, Athens)

At first glance over Bagaki's compelling oil on canvas and works on paper, there lies a real sense of aesthetic hybrid - of art history, exoticism and imaginary reality. The problem with all three is an historical one.

Bagaki draws the viewer, indeed allures them, into a discreet feminine discourse, a constellation of subjects that question representation, desire and taboo with genuine personality, humour and wit

The work harnesses bodily subjects: natural or artificial. Whether animate or inanimate, they are imbued with a preconceived sense of movement. Carefully arranged, they are objects laden with the autobiographical and universal narrative of women. The landscape, objectification and idealisation referenced, recaptured and parodied in the works is derived from the art historically and culturally manifest by men depicting women lying around or posing nude for exotic consumption, or imitating nature from the masculine perspective.