DIGITAL GLITZZ

Constantinos Papachristou, 2017

The recent works of Katherine Vafias confirm the particular relationship she has with photograph, a relationship built during her previous works and here it finds another expression. In this series of works Vafia is using the photo as a means, rather than as a final expression of her creative need. The photo is the canvas upon which a new work is born. The new elements integrated in the photographic surface, walk on tiptoe between the memories of a sensitive childishness and the coldness of digital intervention. So, the artist is creating new images that exceed the limits of artistic photography and constitute autonomous art works of another more personal, perception.

Katherine Vafias creates her images using the basic principles of symmetry and geometric organization. Through a kaleidoscopic perspective and using a slight distortion, she harmoniously builds the artistic field. Her interventions, on one occasion several and on another occasion fewer, are not symptomatic by studied, functionally, aesthetically and symbolically as well. The drawings-symbols are integrated into the whole, creating their own codes and require the spectator to decipher them. The alternation of covered and uncovered faces is an option that has many and different reading ways. On the one hand it creates a subcutaneous eroticism, but it refers a well to woman’s face covering for religious reasons. The contrast is obvious, but creative as well, because it functions as an enticement for the fundamental issues of individual choices and personal freedom.

The works of Katherina Vafias, though inspired by the bright world of fashion, create a melancholic and dark atmosphere. The fantasy world she creates, recalls images to the mind from the gloomy reality perceived in the Clockwork Orange of Stanley Kubrick, or in the poetic symbolism of Terry Gilliam in the Brazil. In this way she forces the spectator to go beyond the superficial reading of the image and see beneath it, approaching, as much as possible, the personal universe of its creator.