We are delighted to present the fabulous work „Between Worlds“ by Polixeni Papapetrou here on Actual Colors May Vary:
In Between Worlds, Australian artist Polixeni Papapetrou has created photographs of her children and their friends dressed as animals dancing upon their own liminal world. In landscapes on the border of sea and land, forest and plain, land and air, the children perform identities other than their own, liberating them from the stereotypes that contemporary culture imposes on them.
Although in a sense absurdist, Papapetrou creates a hybridised child-animal as she sees parallels in their respective worlds. Children have a magical affinity with animals and meet up with them in their imagination, through fiction and fantasy and from cuddly toys to animations. For most of the history of philosophy, it’s what we don’t share with animals that defines us as human. Animals enter our consciousness in mysterious ways and we study them in order to understand ourselves and our emotional realm. In a similar way, children are the ‘Other’ that defines adulthood; and for that reason, children pervade our consciousness, at times adorably and at times threateningly.
Through their acting and performing, the children transgress boundaries and blur the lines between fantasy/theatre, mythology/reality, archetype/play, male/female, child/adult and animal/human. The child as animal creates a new space and within this ambiguity, Papapetrou explores the place that children occupy in our cultural understanding and how they might bestride the stage of art.
→ www.polixenipapapetrou.net
→ www.polixenipapapetrou.net/works.php?cat=Between_Worlds_2009
