Oikeiosis

The notion of memory is only one of the motives that pushed Mara Palena to start a long process - potentially infinite - titled of "Oikeiôsis". An ancient Greek word, used to indicate self-realization through the knowledge of the inner self. Using analog archival pictures, produced from the artist's childhood up until today, the process is a continuous image alteration that seems to be regulated by a state of consciousness that is at times fragile and melancholy, sometimes romantic, sometimes sharp - almost violent - but never graspable. Alterations similar to a sound frequency, which regulate the tone of our perception of reality and its aesthetic transposition; universal frequencies that vibrate in the presence of a memory, which permeates every body. Passing through the crowd of a rave, where human profiles can hardly be recognized, the audience find himself in a large cardiac apparatus, which pulsates through the images and sounds of a diary. A memory that not belong to the viewer, but seems warmly familiar.

Oikeiôsis is a term introduced by the Stoic philosophers (ca. 300 BC) to indicate the realization, the ultimate goal of living beings. According to the Stoics it is the knowledge of the self, through the synaesthesis, or internal perception. Thanks to this self-knowledge living beings can fly, swim, move without anyone ever having taught them. It contains therefore the strength, health, beauty, functionality of the body, as well as love for one's own species and in man for his community.

The full work is a mixed media work where the artist, experimenting the sound therapy, develops with a sound designer, Donato Panaccio, frequencies linked to emotions and feelings trying to reach a deeper understanding of the inner self-awareness.

Matilde Scaramellini, Twenty14