Bergen Resource Centre for International Development, Jekteviksbakken 31
Opening
with presentation by Irini Gonou: Monday 10 March at 14:30.
The exhibition is an art quest which explores the healing
and protective power of the written word as a specific cultural idiom of the
Arabic script and early North African cultures.
The artist uses natural materials such as cotton fabric,
handmade paper and natural inks, reeds, leaves and linen twine. Working with
these raw materials, she explores medical-magical-protective properties and
their symbolic meanings. "In my works the poetic language replaces the
magic formulas considering anew the healing properties of art in modern
societies", explains Irini Gonou.
Born in
Athens, Irini Gonou graduated from the Ecole Nationale
Superieure des Beaux-Arts and the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts
Decoratifs in Paris, where she lived for eleven years. Since 1980 she
has shown her art work in thirty three solo exhibitions in Greece, Germany, UK,
France, USA and Belgium. Her solo exhibition Al-Khatt, the magic script in 2008
was a visual dialog at the Benaki Museum of Islamic Art in Athens. She has
participated in numerous group exhibitions in Greece and abroad. Her artworks
are included in Museum collections as well as Municipal Galleries, private
Museums and Foundations, and a variety of private collections in Greece and
abroad. Gonou lives and works in Athens and teaches a calligraphy workshop on
the Mediterranean Scripts at the Museum of Islamic Art of Athens.
There will be an opening of the exhibition where the artist
presents her work on Monday 10 March at 14:30. The exhibition will be open from
09:00-15:00 on Tuesday 11 March and Wednesday 12 March.
Jointly organized by: Centre
for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies(SMI) at the University of Bergen and the
Organization for the Greek-Norwegian cooperation in the fields of culture and
humanities.
The text comes out of the site: http://www.resourcecentre.no/news/?478=magic-scripts-apotropaic-texts
