On January 18, 2024, CITRONNE Gallery-Athens presents the exhibition "Liminality" curated by Vicky Tsirou. With this exhibition, CITRONNE Gallery introduces another current problematic. It addresses challenges arising from a contemporary liquid reality that subverts traditional ways of being, identity and life – whether voluntarily or involuntarily. The transitional stage of moving from one state to another at both an individual and collective level is described, along with the associated "rituals". The artists Yorgos Giatromanolakis, Marina Papadaki, Natalia Papadopoulou and Maro Fasouli engage with the concept of liminality.
Liminality is a term introduced by the French ethnographer Arnold van Gennep in his book The Rites of Passage in 1909. It represents the middle stage of the three-part pattern "separation, transition, incorporation in rituals." The exhibition repositions this concept in the context of contemporary experiences, a result of global developments. The curator of the exhibition Vicky Tsirou broadens the term’s meaning and examines its contemporary expressions. As she points out in her curatorial text, "more recent interpretations encompass not only the notion of ritual but also changes in the social and political sphere. Today, in the era of 'liquid modernity,' we observe that the status quo, an entire value system, is in a state of continuous instability characterized by successive transitions, or in other words, by a permanent condition of liminality."
The works in the exhibition trace 'Liminality' through four invisible passages: architectural structure, the course of history, the integration of tradition, and the inner experiential processes. The exhibition does not strictly align each artist's work with a thematic axis but tends to place them on one of these four axes. The works are integrated into the gallery's architectural structure, positioned in different rooms to reflect the analogy made by van Gennep of society with a house and its different rooms. Passages in the lives of individuals and social groups resemble movement between the internal spaces of a residence.
