Pavlina Vagioni: Oikeiōsis (Kinship) in Venice

Oikeiōsis: the ancient Stoic concept of expanding the circle of care, from self, to family, to all humanity.

Etymology: from the Greek “oikos” (household, home); the act of "making something one's own" or "recognizing something as belonging to oneself."

Meaning: kinship, affinity, co-belonging, connectedness.

This May, the Hellenic Diaspora Foundation launches its first project beyond Greece. Oikeiōsis is a multi-sensory solo exhibition of new work by Greek artist Pavlina Vagioni at Spazio Tana (across the main entrance of the Arsenale) on the occasion of the 61st Biennale Arte. The exhibition is curated by Dr. Laura Augusta, Jane Dale Owen Director and Chief Curator of the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston. Across two rooms, it unfolds as a sensorial passage from isolation to kinship, in direct dialogue with the Biennale's theme In Minor Keys.

Drawing on Stoic ethics and pre-Socratic cosmology, Oikeiōsis challenges the illusion that we are separate. Vagioni works with elemental materials: sound, light, reflection, and salt. The first room is Neikos, the ancient Greek word for strife. A cube of polygonal plexiglass reflects visitors in fragmented, multiplied form, confronting them with the geometry of separation. The second room is Philotes, the power that brings harmony to separate elements. Six warm rock-salt seats surround a hexagonal structure embedded with mirrors. When someone sits, sound and light respond to their presence. A layered vocal soundscape, incorporating the artist's own soprano voice, evokes the Orphic declaration "I am a child of Earth and Starry Heaven."

A classically trained singer and composer, Vagioni has composed the Philotes soundscape in a minor chord that builds gradually from low to high. As visitors gather and each activates the sound by sitting, she aims to create the Tartini effect: a psychoacoustic phenomenon, named for the Venetian baroque composer Giuseppe Tartini, in which two frequencies heard together produce a phantom third that exists only as resonance.

Vagioni comments:

"The world is loud with reasons to turn away from one another. I wanted to make a quiet work. Not a protest, but a space where strangers can sit together and remember that this, too, is real. In a Biennale composed in the minor keys, this is the frequency I wanted to tune to: not a sound, but what the sound reveals."

Curator Dr. Laura Augusta comments:

"A group of salt seats will change shape over the course of the exhibition, holding the record of physical touch. If we imagine kinship as a kind of embrace, of shared space and gathering, of song, we might describe our entanglements with others as a series of overlapping, embracing circles, widening out from the self. In a moment of extraordinary fragmentation, the artist understands the importance of empathy, closeness, and warmth, even before information. Perhaps that is our most primordial memory: the feeling of being cradled in co-presence.”

About artist Pavlina Vagioni / About curator Dr Laura Augusta / About the Hellenic Diaspora Foundation

Location: Spazio Tana, Ramo de la Tana 2127/A, 30122, Venice, opposite the main entrance of the Arsenale

Directions: Wego Google Maps

Press
For more information, interviews, and press visits, please contact: Sarah Greenberg, Evergreen Arts, sgreenberg@evergreen-arts.com, T +44 (0)7866543242

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