Outset Greece is delighted to have supported State of Concept's group show I’ll open the door straight, dead straight into the fire, curated by the collective What, How and for Whom/ WHW and inaugurated at State of Concept on May 17th 2019.
Titled after a verse from a poem May 25th(1978) by poet, actress and anarchist Katerina Gogou(1940–1993), the exhibition "I’ll open the door straight, dead straight into the fire" started from the figure of women partisans in intertwined histories of Yugoslav and Greek anti-fascist struggles and post-war constellation of Cold War. The exhibition inserted itself in complex social landscape of Yugoslav-Greek relations situated in similar, yet historically differentiated political positions at the European semi-periphery whose histories of antifascist resistance led and inspired by communist ideas went into abrupt directions. In both countries, the recent re-patriarchisation of society is one of many side-effects of political crises related to vassal position within European Union resulting in abolishing worker’s rights, pauperisation, rising racism and fascism.
While looking at interconnected Yugoslav and Greek partisan histories, experiences of victories and defeats of various temporalities of revolutionary female engagement, the exhibition related them to wider liberation and anti-colonial struggles and contemporary feminist demands for total social alternative. "I’ll open the door straight, dead straight into the fire" traced how individual voices and gestures coalesce in collective movements, mapping some of the possible currents of female emancipatory participation that run deep and wide, interflowing in the common stream of struggles.
OPENING: 17th May 19.30, with a guided tour by the curators and the artists
ON VIEW: 18th May — 13th September 2019
