CHRYSANTHI KOUMIANAKI

Chrysanthi Koumianaki’s work God, I suspect You are a leftist intellectual… (2015) borrows its title from a slogan from the May 1968 events in France (I suspect God of being a leftist intellectual). The
work features posters, announcements, sketches and other forms of printed matter, all of which introduce a new graphic code, a new alphabet and a new font. Imitations of posters, flyers, declarations and manifestos, written in a language that needs to be deciphered to be understood. Here, the letters of the alphabet are replaced by plans for ideal cities
designed by architects influenced by Vitruvius (they include Filarete, Fra Giocondo, Girolamo Maggi and Giorgio Vasari) during the Renaissance in the 15th-16th centuries, when utopianism and the quest to discover alternative ways of life erupted from within the intense cultural upheavals of that time. Those plans came to nothing. But although they never materialized, some of them inspired the creation of “ideal cities” that were subsequently rejected once again; plans for potential cities that aspired to an ideal urban configuration and an ideal life. The work also investigates the relationship between the ideas and aspirations of mass demonstrations and the concept of an ideal society. The idea of subverting the status quo, connected to the uncompromising and the imaginary. Here, then, language is deconstructed and represented by unmaterialized proposals, thereby suggesting a revisiting of language, in an imaginary or actual way. A “notice board” constantly filling up with new notices, is redefined over and over again, always questioning
its current content.