ESMERALDA KOSMATOPOULOS

Galatea (Γαλάτεια) was the name of the statue carved of ivory by Pygmalion, which then came to life in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. It that myth, the hand of a man created an object shaped as a woman body and eventually turned this body-object it into a real person.

This body of works explores our perception of identity - ours and the one of the Others - and the relationship between the individual’s consciousness and the physical body in its materiality - a combination of flesh, skin, bones. 

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Each video shows the artist body bended in various positions. Slowly a man’s hand starts touching delicately its skin and entering an intimacy that is not his. As the video progressed in silence, the first caresses that were entering the limits of Otherness become a mechanical palpation of the flesh, the artist’s body becomes a malleable material not that different to clay the Other can shape.