Dio Horia is excited to announce ‘Hosts and Parasites’, an exhibition of a new suite of sculptures from Dora Economou.
Dora Economou works with humble, mass-produced supply materials and centuries-old origami designs in a manner akin to open-source coding: producing completely sui generis, original pieces on the basis of the ancient standardized language of traditional techniques and with the use of prefabricated everyday mediums. In this way, in sharp contrast with the resulting work’s viscerally artisanal and nonindustrial aesthetic impact, Economou’s creative process in fact employs the very same operational procedures as AI, and as it does so, critically reclaims them for the unique affordances of human agency and lived sensibility. This paradoxical dichotomy of creativity and standardization—as well as a passing acknowledgement of the phenomenon of “digital slop”—is also embedded in the show’s very title. Economou always invests particular care and consideration into the titles of her exhibitions, for they function as a unifying cipher key to the individual assembled pieces’ deeper allegorical meaning, and the present one goes straight to the heart of not only the specific story unfolding within the gallery’s walls but the artist’s overarching creative philosophy as well.
It was on a trip to Brazil that Economou was first brought to thoughts of hosts and parasites by the sights of Rio’s famous orchid-bestrewn trees: technically an invasive species, the flowers parasitize their host trees, extracting the sufficient nutrients for the flowers’ thriving from the trees’ trunks and root systems—and in the process not only beautify them but also make the trees more attention-worthy and deserving of protection and special care from the city’s residents. The sinuous form of the flowers, and the archetype of a braided parasitic plant more broadly, of which ivy is perhaps the most emblematic example, appear inside the gallery in the forms of the rigorously folded, pastel cotton of Toubou Toubou Za Toubou Zitsou α Kapou Kouloukoupou Kouloukoupou Kouloukoupa, as well as the woolen Cian Cuna Macan Ata Locs Alonlao. At the same time, these sculptural florae’s reference, along with the rest of the show’s pieces, may yet just as easily be traced back to Economou’s other travels throughout last year—in Thailand, Hong Kong, Mekong, and Japan—and this culture-clash intermix is reflective of the reflexively parasitic nature of her work at large, which engages and amplifies the unstable duality of the very idea of parasites and their hosts—which one is the beneficiary and which is the victim? Does borrowing and repurposing the centuries-old idioms of artisanal traditions give them new life or somehow take unfair advantage of their achievement? Do the gallery and its patrons give breathing room and support to the artist’s dreams, or abuse them for their own benefit? Ougaga Boom Boom Hi Gapa Goum Birli Gaga Aougigi Aougigi Bagala Gaouga Gapersonifies this question by contrasting the delicacy and rigorous fastidiousness of the traditional origami caterpillar design with the strikingly oversize and menacing, but strangely hypnotizing, proportions of the gigantic insects.
There is another subject that is never too far from the idea of hosts and parasites: as one can easily observe, most of the locations listed above do have a torturous colonial past, both as the offended and as the offenders. And while we may no longer refer to countries as “colonies,” or brazenly aspire to “civilize” unfamiliar cultures toward our own liking, that colonial parasitic logic continues to exist in the form of multinational corporations, tourism, extractive capitalism, and gentrification. Greece and Athens are by no means an exception to that condition, and the neighborhood where Dio Horia finds itself, all the more so. But who is the host and who is the parasite? The answer to this question, Dora Economou suggests, can never be definitively settled.