All that Matters is that the Wound Fits the Arrow
Platforms Projects, 2019, Athens
A participation on behalf of Norrköping AIR,
a collaboration with the Museum of Forgetting
and affiliated with Linköping University
Curated by Costa Economou.
10 artists in the light of Caravaggio
Larnaca Municipal Gallery, 2018
Curated by Dr. Stratis Pantazis
For the video installation titled all that matters is that the wound fit the arrow (2002) by Klitsa Antoniou, the central subject is the wound (physical and psychological trauma). Five different screens project different but interlinked videos, which mainly show from different angles a red rose dripping blood on a wound, located externally on a woman’s spinal cord. Seen from afar, they appear like works of Still Life, since the movement is shown in slow motion. Even the title of the piece, which is derived from Franz Kafka (1883-1924) (“it is enough that the arrows fit exactly to the wounds that they caused”), clearly refers to the wound and its source. The rose symbolises love, passion and beauty, but at the same time, due to its thorns, it is identified with the pain, the scars and the wounds that it leaves on the human body. The artist reverts the function of the wound, with the blood dripping from the rose and not from the human body, and at the same time portrays the blood as “feeding” the wound, as a therapeutic process on a personal and sociopolitical level.
(From Dr. Stratis Pantazis’ essay for the catalogue of the exhibition 10 Artists in the Light of Caravaggio, at the Larnaka Municipal Gallery, Cyprus, 2018).
