We have been taught to interpret individuality and shaping of engendered identity by means of violent separation and traumatic loss schema, as conceived by Freud in his analysis of the famous Oedipus complex. Realizing the lack of phallus functions as a structural void, as a disability in the idea of female identity. The feministic re-approach made great efforts to re-determine femininity, not by means of the phallic model which negatively defined female existence, but rather as a process of constituting the individual, which is actually implemented through language and everyday performative acts of the gender.
The installation of Indoors (Kassi, Nomidou, Politi, Christea) invites us to meet the multiple interpretations of female individuality: is it a mental or a sentimental state of being, is it an experienced event, a set of experiences, or the result of recollections?
A structural feature of this installation is the familiar space of everyday life composed by household items (table, wardrobe, linen chest) yet conveyed in an unfamiliar environment where they acquire a new meaning and gain new significance.
Conflicts, succession of generations and over-reconciliation with maternal body play a pivotal role in the visualization of the terms of the female status perception. The flowing floor reverses the static condition by reintroducing the convention of time as an experience: as roles are changing, equally relationships follow one another, without however losing their primary focus on collectivity and solidarity.
The shift of the original installation (Indoors) from a status of limited -in terms of time- and controlled publicity to that of a full exhibition (Indoors is moving out) re-determines the anyway vague borders between private and public, while at the same time the horizon of expectations is widened. The feeling of safety emerging from the absolute control of space is sacrificed in the name of a more mature and substantial intervention, based on the four artists’ collective function.