The café of the National Archaeological Museum of Athens will host the solo exhibition of the artist Iliana Natsou entitled “Habitus” from April 12 to May 6, 2025. The curator, Phaye Tzanatoulakou, Dr in History of Art notes:

“I wanted to observe Natsou’s works in complete silence, so that I could immerse myself in the innermost aspect of an interpretation of the human condition, on a journey from the outside to the center of existence. The bodily marks of the navels seem inexplicably familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, as eyes that look at us from within. Are they channels of communication with the outside world, or do they facilitate the artist herself to come into contact with her inner universe, with a previous form of life, protected within the amniotic fluid, pure, primary, a source of uncontaminated creation.

By focusing on this specific point, an atmosphere of healing confinement is generated, not producing a feeling of navel-gazing, but as if the body dares to attempt a contact with our inner organs, renouncing the protection of the skin, and getting symbolically rid of all conventions attached to it.
This alluding focus is very intrusive at parts of the skin that carry an erotic nuance, and provoke an almost voyeuristic interest. What is it that excites the sexual imagination of humans? The folds, the deep valleys between gentle hills, the feeling of precarious balance on vibrating concentric rings, just before we plunge into a wet abyss. Is it perhaps the fleeting moment of turmoil on the threshold between Eros and Death?

For Iliana Natsou, the body, statue-like, fleshy but also misty, elusive, is transformed into the mysterious interior of a cathedral’s crypt. With the devotion of a nature exploring monk, the creator approaches as a genuine Vanitas object, this intoxicating, elaborate armor, which encompasses beauty and at the same time decay, meaning and frustrations. And its ideally faint and simultaneously medically anti-heroic aspect characterizes Natsou’s devotion to a new manuality, attempting to depict with the fewest possible means the human body as an exercise in geometry within the universe, but also as a universe that hosts the keys to the miracle of life.

Just as the moon constantly hovers in cosmic chaos, shadowing the earth, so too the artist oscillates eternally between the allure of the faithful representation of the image, and the abstract depiction of the meaning of what a body means. The management of an ‘in-between’ energy field that surrounds the body seems to concern her equally, as it suggests a physical firmament without boundaries, genders, races, social inequalities and expectations of perfection and artificial beauty, but which carries the compass of desire, imagination, truth, the beauty of diversity and the enjoyment of imperfection.”

Admission to the Café is free.

Opening: Sunday, April 13, 12:00 – 15:00
Exhibition Duration: April 13 – May 06, 2025
Exhibition opening hours: Monday to Sunday: 8:30 – 15:30
Tuesday: 13:00 – 20:00
Curator: Faye Tzanetoulakou
Organizer: Emilia Kougia, tel. 6944417606
Address: National Archaeological Museum, 44 28th October (Patission), Athens 10682
Information: www.namuseum.gr