Lia Smaragda

A retro-futurist story of utopian politics, ideological conflicts, supernatural leaders and totalitarian spectacle. Cyberpunk queer pirates against rainbow homo-capitalist normies. Revolution vs reformism; logic vs affect. The trappings of post-internet identity politics through a contemporary take of the myth of Orpheus.

Avant-Drag! paints portraits of ten drag artists of varying gender expressions and sexualities who take to the streets of Athens to query, problematise and (yes, please!) undermine social strictures. Employing wildly imagined personas – like riot housewives and Albanian turbo-folk girls – who perform acts as revolutionary as praising abortion and as charming as drawing childish pictures, these artists call for social justice by taking aim at conservatism, patriarchy, patriotism, racism and sexism.

My house is under occupation. An army of tiny porcelain figurines is everywhere. I never chose to have them, just -inevitably- inherited them. And they are many and heavy and quite useless. Almost like aliens to me. These objects become the protagonists of this work which is an act of reconciliation and an attempt to turn the thick ancestral darkness -to the extent that i can- into light.