CONTRE-LETTRES
Éditeur Paris
THE ARTIST : CLEA DOUKAS
Cléa Doukas is a young Greek visual artist, born by chance of a family diplomatic posting to Windhoek in Namibia at the start of the new millennium.
Passionate about drawing and painting from an early age, she perfected her technique at the prestigious Athens School of Graphic Arts (ASFA), a major reference point for the fine arts in Europe.
Thus trained, she returned to Africa and criss-crossed Namibia. Captivated by the haunting power of the vast expanses of desert in the south-west, the lush green lands and exceptional wildlife of the Etosha National Park, which rubs shoulders with a coastline still untouched by man, she decided to take up residence in Windhoek, the capital in the centre of the country, perched at an altitude of over one thousand six hundred metres, a charming, well-kept town with an extraordinary cultural diversity, both African and European.
It was here that she developed her work, which is now recognised in Africa and Greece. It is here that she models and sculpts in clay and wood, digitises and ensures the reproduction of the work we offer: "BAO".
"BAO SCULPTURE"
"BAO" is from here and there, now and always. It is from Africa and Greece, from the springtime of humanity and its future.
Cléa identifies personally with this work, which is like her spiritual self-portrait. "BAO" arose in the vermilion-red desert dunes of the Namib, which are Cléa's meditation ground and source of inspiration.
"BAO" is me, but it's also all of humanity in all eternity. She says of her work.
"BAO is a woman unless he is a man. She was born in Africa, unless it was more than 5000 years ago, at the beginning of the Bronze Age, in the Cyclades archipelago. It is from this world or another. It is a belief in a spirit, a vital force that animates living beings and objects, but also natural elements such as stones or the wind.
It is what Cléa learnt from African wisdoms and animist beliefs as necessary attempts to sacralise living things in a modernist approach close to contemporary ecological conceptions.
It is the result of the emotional shock Cléa experienced during her visit to the Goulandrís art museum in Kolonáki, Athens, where she was confronted as a child with the contemplation of Cycladic sculptures.
"BAO" is a Cycladic work in its sobriety of form, its primitive "essentialism" and its extreme stylistic sophistication.
"BAO" RESIN SCULPTURE
(jade green | azure blue | light beige)
Edition 1000 copies | BAO©MMXXIV
With certificate and artist's signature | 17 cm
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5LtpMnouLh/?igsh=MWFyMWVzcm81bmptaA==
CONTRE-LETTRES Publisher, Paris