Archive

2025

9 AMPHIBIAN

This time there will be no ark. Not even the Arians will return from Mars. New life will emerge from the sea that covers everything. Beings will emerge from the core of the Earth. Where Eros and Eris are magnetized. In her womb electrically, like lightning, the Amphibian will be conceived. From the fire of the core they will be ejected condensed and as they come to the surface they will be filled with water and air. And when the acceleration will exceed the speed of light they will acquire their visible mass. Shellfish, flying reptiles, coral-rocks alive will solidify the five elements again. The amoebae will be fertilized by the blue flying mushrooms of the bottom. Orchids will nest in the trunks. Everything will be pleasure, and pain even, without fear. Only nostalgia will remind here and there, stirring the salty seaweed, hard the Memory.

2023

Orphic Mysteries

Φ is the child of one and two, of the unit and its binary hypostasis. It is the magical number that never ends: the eternal hermaphrodite, son of Rhea and Cronus, of the sphere and time. The Logos of the Golden Ratio, the eternal division of the genetic amoeba, the dance of the cosmic DNA, the endless fermentation. The greatest Orphic mystery is the Coherence that the celebration gives to the world. By celebrating, Dionysus defeated real armies. The power of Intoxication breaks the limits of restraint and strips man and feelings from Himself, seeking to share Himself: I am the Vine, the bread is our body, the wine is our blood, the dance is our soul united. The unit is divided and reunited in the dance. In the theater, the repeated pantomime of each drama, as roles are projected and cut off from oneself, brings catharsis. The Orphic Mysteries are not conveyed by logical words but by feelings that reward instinct. They concern the click of a higher sensual knowledge, where the initiates communicate united. Then sadness and joy, mourning and resurrection, feeling and reason become our trial, our unique and indivisible, and panhuman memory. “Snake, monkey, and eagle with the great feast we will finish the ballos” … Lydia Venieri Maroussi, May 2023

2021

1821

In the fifteenth century, the Ottomans occupied Byzantium, extinguishing the last breath of ancient Greek culture. At the same time, European empires, with the same ruthless, barbaric criminal testosterone, were destroying America's ancient civilizations. Their purpose was to exploit the Earth and reign through dark and sick domination. In the year 1821, Greece, Peru, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, Panama, and the Dominican Republic, attained their independence. It was the era of romance where the revolution was a celebration, the war was love, blood was art. Human memory was filled with heroes, imagination with allegories of great ideas, and the Earth spoke the language of humanity directly to people's hearts. The fifth Mykonos Biennale honors Earth with its theme "1821", the year of revolution. Our planet, a living organism with her own wise will, coordinated her power and drove liberation through her bowels into the hearts of the people and shook the chains of tyranny. Lydia Venieri New York, May 2020

2019

Apathia

Time has aged, fashion repeats itself and the future looks nostalgic. With order globalism has created a new civilization/culture, excessively controlled, unprotected and depressed. Ambition for power and money floats without substance like a bored familiar junkie who has abused everyone and everything. Ancient cities, and treasures of nature disappear. People and animals are abused and all this in a world that is educated with democratic principles and religions touting love. The mind refuses to understand and the repugnant visions accumulate in the bowels of existence. A Pandemic of indigestion overcasts humanity. This serenity is not reminiscent peace. Its an uncomfortable silence, a charged stillness. It is the Silence of the Lambs. Is it love that gives them the power to survive the bloody centuries? Their healing look gifts forgiveness and they who feels it know the answer.

2017

Trans-Allegoria

Allegories are symbolic figures which identify ideas and give to the abstraction a face, an expression, a position, a costume which reveals the meaning. Victory has wings, Death is a skeleton with scythe, when Spring is surrounded by flowers. The Allegory can freeze the temporality of an idea, like the gold fleece, the holy grail, the “immortal" water, or the Spring of Youth. The Greek mythology humanizes everything, the muse, the grace, the winds. The Gods give form and behavior to all the main powers of the universe. In the Greek national anthem Freedom, exhausted, poor but full of courage lives her life of a constant struggle. An empire holds a specter and democracy wears on her head laurel leaves, war wears black and red symboling ash and blood. But what happens when a symbolism goes beyond the extreme of its meaning. The title of the Mykonos Biennale 2017 is Trans-Allegoria. It raises (and answers) the question of the capacity of Art to initiates, introduce and captivate. Art which transforms energy into creation and creation into life. The saga of the Great Ideas, at the transcendental Island that changes everyone into something new, something that discovers only in place. Lydia Venieri Athens 2014

2015

Antidote

Everyday like a poison, world news infects humanity, plunging the human conscience into a deep hibernation of frantic inactivity, in an attempt to find some serenity to endure in until the end. However they say that if a tarantula bites you the only way to escape death is to dance day and night, jumping from the pain and staying awake, because if you let go and fall asleep you are lost. Such a crazy celebration of consciousness is the Mykonos Biennale as its theme for 2015 is the Antidote. What is the antidote? Is it love? Is it power? Or is it sorcery? Always the artist, the scientist, and the alchemist have searched for the answer to immortality, the philosophers’ stone, and the magic portal. Their quest, itself, holds the answer for by it they have already danced the first steps of the Great Awakening. Lydia Venieri Athens 2014

2013

Crises and Paganism

The theme of the 2013 Mykonos Biennale is a parody of the Crisis Industry’s choice of Greece as a main protagonist in their current financial disaster scenario. The Crisis punishes in an exemplary way paganistic Greece, who is idly dancing and drinking as the “southern latino lover”, the grasshopper of Aesop’s story. Greece as the juvenile Pinocchio is persuaded by the cat and the fox, the northern rich buddies, to sell his books to join their party while the old Geppetto must sell his coat to pay the bills. With the broken Geppettos, the uprooted forests of Chalkidiki, the blackened valleys of solar panels, Greece is depressed and bullied by the global media. “Idleness is the mother of evil” and Greece is unemployed. 17 million tourists want to see her swim, sing and dance because, oh what a coincidence! It’s summer, Adonis with Persephone are back on earth feasting together with the guitar playing grasshopper. Is belly dancing considered a legitimate job? And if yes, when do the people qualify for their pension? Is retirement obligatory? Can the hungry bear cubs dance? Can old men dance? Was the empress Theodora the daughter of a bear tamer? Was emperor Justinian the nephew of an Albanian immigrant? What connects Europe with the Holy Alliance? Has the age of the empire returned? If money is the Crisis and Nature is paganism, is this relationship an oxymoron? As both Annas in Brecht’s Seven Deadly Sins, the role of morality change at the beat of global hypocrisy. As the birds sing, the waves unravel and Pinocchio’s fairy is disguised as Art and wrestles with Aladdin’s genie and the three consumer wishes. To be continued in alternative Mykonos where the renowned nudist emperor will visit with his new clothes. Lydia Venieri New York 2012