Home Displacement
- Video-Installation (furniture, three LCD screens, television, food)
& Live Inhabitation by the Greek Grandmother.
400cm x 500cm
Group Show: BA Fine Art Degree Show, '25 Degrees',
University of Leeds, Whitehall Waterfront, Leeds.
1st – 7th June 2006
'Home Displacement' by Janis Rafailidou is an environmental installation inside the gallery space. It is a large-scale setting of a kitchen-living room environment with references to a Greek domestic space. Inviting my Grandmother all the way from Greece, the installation is inhabited by her presence during exhibition hours. The Greek grandmother re-located in her new domestic location, she cooks Greek food and knits in the space following her everyday routine. In addition, the gallery's visitors are welcomed to interact and communicate with her by having launch along the large dinner table in the middle of the exhibition. Perhaps the Grandma as subject, by inhabiting the exhibition space, highlighting the complexities of private and public communication which, in turn, subverts the experience of familiar notions of language and culture. This habitation of the space by the Grandma should not be defined under the terms of an improvised performance. The installation is usually exhibited next to the 'Dialogue Series' videos (displayed in LCD screens with audio).
The work, as part of the group Degree Show 25 Degrees of the University of Leeds, received international coverage by media such as BBC 24hours News, BBC Look North, BBC radio, Real Radio, Alpha Greek radio and press such as The Times, Sunday Times, Daily Mirror, Yorkshire Evening Post, and the Greek national newspapers: Ethnos and Eleutherotepea.