Forty Floating Moons

 

 

 

Forty Floating Moons, by Rania Bellou

 

 

 

 



 at the Kalfayan Galleries, Haritos Street, Athens.

 

'Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were'. Marcel Proust.

 

Regaining and recreating the past, trying to reinterpret it, focusing on the 'forgotten', how we relate the past to the present, and how we perceive material from bygone eras are some of the themes that Rania Bellou explores in her art.

'The articulation of memory through language reveals a wider gulf between memories and our recollection of them. Everyday objects and objects seen only through narratives become mementos of an elusive past. Based on the Proustian model of subjective memory as a recreation of the past, my artworks compel the viewer to return to 'personal' memories. Such a return though is only possible through a 'free' journey among blurred and vague mental images. Using visuals and sounds as Proustian triggers, my artworks imply ways of perceiving the world outside of time. They often take the form of real objects or stories that are constituted as stereotypes through omission of their actual history', reads Bellou's artist's statement from her website.

 

The exhibition records the love letters of a young couple in 1950s Greece through a series of drawings on superimposed multiple layers of paper. The drawings are blurred expressing the nature of memory itself. In our search for a story behind the image, the connection between the image and the subsequent narration is reinstated.

 

Assuming the role of 'cultural archaeologist',  Bellou attempts to help us inhabit the distance between reality as it's recorded in a photograph and our ability to decipher the ordering of time.

 



 

 

 

 

A Memoir of the Other II,  2014, (pencil on Kozo paper)

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

Following the Trail of Lost Memories, 2014