> YIANNIS PAPPAS (ale)
Reflex
1:34
2017
Analogies, metaphors and symbols are the strings which keep one’s mind connected to the world, Hannah Arendt said. With “Reflex”, Yiannis Pappas investigates these strings not only as connections of humans experiences, but as strategies of stabilizing processes. How does the individual’s location in the world get formed by the law and bureaucratic actions? How do symbolic acts of order, submission and discipline create society and conformity? The title “Reflex” refers to the spontaneous and instinctive response to a stimulus which is firmly established in our human awareness and our body. By involving himself in a performative act of destablishing, Pappas questions the term as a metaphor of something inherent biological and also reflects on its potential of empowerment.
Yiannis Pappas is a visual and performance artist based in Berlin. He studied sculpture and photography at the Athens School of Fine Arts until 2008. During the last year of his studies, he attended Christiane Möbus’ class at the University of the Arts in Berlin (UdK), and completed the artistic and scientific Master of Arts Space Strategies at the Academy of Arts Weissensee in Berlin. He has received awards from the Academy of Athens, Greek State Scholarship Foundation (IKY), Goethe Institute Residencies, and German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). His work has been exhibited in Israel, Germany, Mexico, France, Chile, Bolivia, Switzerland, Italy, India, Greece and Egypt. Religion, urbanism, nature and cultural spaces are central to his artistic research, while the notion of intervention dominates his work.
