Mama Klorin by Doreida Xhogu
Curated by Ioanna Papapavlou, Pati Vardhami
Opening: Friday 15 November, 18.30-21.30
Exhibition duration: 16 November 2024 – 31 January 2025
Opening hours- Wednesday – Friday: 15.00-19.00, Saturdays: 12.00-16.00
The Demos Center, Ipitou 17, Plaka, Athens
Mama Klorin began in 2015 as the emotional territory that Doreida Xhogu created in response to her need to process thoughts and memories of herself and her mother as migrant cleaning workers. A space that would allow her to stretch the physical limits of manual labor and reflect upon her personal trauma through the corrosive effect of cleaning products. Thereafter, she invited other female cleaners to join and share their own stories. A variety of materials –clay, liquid glass, kitchen towel, bathroom tiles, moving image and photography– assemble the working ground for a collective workshop. Hard surfaces come in contrast to the fragility of these materials. Unrefined clay sculptures are placed on DIY pallets made out of wood collected from the street. A roll of kitchen towel becomes the artist’s personal diary, a record of thoughts, plans, aspirations. Bathroom tiles provide the basis to paint still life compositions depicting cleaning tools. Their rigid facets are coated with liquid glass, creating a gloss finish. It reminds us of the daily need for shine and sterilization demanded of the domestic and maintenance workers. The affinity amongst the women fostered while folding sheets, ironing or disinfecting hotel rooms, is eventually conveyed to the artist’s studio. Their coming together gradually evolves into a performative attempt to determine their own stories by shaping the artistic form. Does the act of cleaning define them or do they define it? Do they leave a deeper trace on visual matter than the ones bleach leaves on their hands? Hands are pivotal in Doreida’s work. They feature in the moments of sharing that unfold in her video work and appear imprinted onto the sculptures created commonly by the women. In October 1969, Mierle Laderman Ukeles wrote the Manifesto for Maintenance Art. A raging piece of writing that turns our attention to the undervalued labor of domestic sanitation, the maintenance of public spaces, and the women working behind the scenes of everyday life. The Manifesto tests the limits of manual labor and art making, as well as of the social production around them. In turn, Doreida contributes to its discourse by delivering a figurative visual output that places cleaning products as an aesthetic starting point. At the same time, she creates the ground for sharing experiences and care that is based on historic gender relations and communal practices. These women come together with the need to coexist within the limitations and possibilities of their working and migratory condition. Stories of suffering and uprooting, laughter and joy, odours and flavours, evoke a scenery of distant places that yet feel familiar. The affect of the collective artwork is conveyed via these rudiments as a possible women’s survival strategy or as an open form of aesthetic kinship.
Doreida Xhogu was born in Selenica, Albania, and studied sculpture at the Athens School of Fine Arts in the class of Afroditi Liti. She held her first solo exhibition entitled Miniera during the Geranis Festival at Romantso, Athens, in 2020; and Qengjat e Vegjël, her second solo exhibition, at ERGO Collective in 2022. Participations in group exhibitions include: The Archaeological Museum of Delphi (2017), the Italian Embassy in Athens in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute (2017 and 2019), the Numismatic Museum of Athens (2019), and MOMus – Experimental Center for the Arts in Thessaloniki (2020). She also participated in the exhibition of the 62nd Thessaloniki Film Festival based on the satire The Rules of the Game by Jean Renoir (2021), and in the exhibition of the Chamber of Fine Arts of Greece at the Former Public Tobacco Factory (2023). She was recently part of the exhibition That which was is now no more at Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center (2023) and presented her project Mama Klorin at New York College with the support of the Albanian Embassy in Athens (2024).
The exhibition is supported by Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung – Office in Greece, with funds from the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development. It is organized by the Frances Rich School of Fine and Performing Arts in collaboration with The Demos Center of Deree – The American College of Greece.
