Full Calendar

Opening: Friday, November 15, 18:00-21:00
Where: The Demos Center, 17 Ipitou Str., Plaka, Athens

Exhibition duration: November 16, 2024 – January 31, 2025
Opening hours: Wednesday – Friday: 15:00-19:00, Saturday: 12:00 – 16:00

Curated by: Ioanna Papapavlou, Pati Vardhami

If you would like to register to attend the opening of the event, please click below:

Please Note: The exhibition will be closed during Thanksgiving break on Thursday, November 28, and Friday, November 29. It will reopen on Saturday, November 30. Additionally, the last day of operation before the Christmas break will be Saturday, December 21, and the exhibition will reopen on Wednesday, January 8.

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About the Event

Mama Klorin began in 2015 as the emotional space that Doreida Xhogu created in response to her need to process thoughts and memories of herself and her mother as migrant cleaning workers. A space that would allow her to stretch the physical limits of manual labor and reflect upon her personal trauma through the corrosive effect of cleaning products. Thereafter, she invited other female cleaners to join and share their own stories.

A variety of materials—clay, liquid glass, kitchen towels, bathroom tiles, moving image and photography—are the working ground for a collective workshop. Hard surfaces come in contrast to the fragility of these materials. Unrefined clay sculptures are placed on DIY pallets made out of wood collected from the street. A roll of kitchen towel becomes the artist’s personal diary, a record of thoughts, plans, aspirations. Bathroom tiles provide the basis to paint still life compositions depicting cleaning tools. Their rigid facets are coated with liquid glass, creating a gloss finish. It reminds us of the daily need for shine and sterilization demanded of domestic and maintenance workers.

The affinity amongst the women fostered while folding sheets, ironing or disinfecting hotel rooms, is eventually conveyed to the artist’s studio. Their coming together gradually evolves into a performative attempt to determine their own stories by shaping the artistic form. Does the act of cleaning define them or do they define it? Do they leave a deeper trace on visual matter than the ones bleach leaves on their hands? Hands are pivotal in Doreida’s work. They are featured in the moments of sharing that unfold in her video work and also appear imprinted onto the sculptures created by the women.

In October 1969, Mierle Laderman Ukeles wrote the Manifesto for Maintenance Art, a raging piece of writing that turns our attention to the undervalued labor of domestic sanitation, the maintenance of public spaces, and the women working behind the scenes in our everyday life. The Manifesto tests the limits of manual labor and art making, as well as of the social production around them. Doreida, in turn, contributes to its discourse by delivering a figurative visual output that places cleaning products as an aesthetic starting point. At the same time, she creates the ground for sharing experiences and care that is based on historic gender relations and communal practices.

These women come together with the need to coexist within the limitations and possibilities of their working and migratory condition. Stories of suffering and uprooting, laughter and joy, odors and flavors, evoke a scenery and sense of distant places that feel familiar. The affect of the collective artwork emerges via these rudiments as a possible women’s survival strategy or an open form of aesthetic kinship.

Doreida Xhogu was born in Selenica, Albania, and studied sculpture at the Athens School of Fine Arts in the class of Afroditi Liti. She held her first solo exhibition entitled Miniera during the Geranis Festival at Romantso, Athens, in 2020; and Qengjat e Vegjël, her second solo exhibition, at ERGO Collective in 2022. Participations in group exhibitions include: The Archaeological Museum of Delphi (2017), the Italian Embassy in Athens in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute (2017 and 2019), the Numismatic Museum of Athens (2019), and MOMus – Experimental Center for the Arts in Thessaloniki (2020). She also participated in the exhibition of the 62nd Thessaloniki Film Festival based on the satire The Rules of the Game by Jean Renoir (2021), and in the exhibition of the Chamber of Fine Arts of Greece at the Former Public Tobacco Factory (2023). She was recently part of the exhibition That which was is now no more at Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center (2023) and presented her project Mama Klorin at New York College with the support of the Albanian Embassy in Athens (2024).

The exhibition is supported by the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung – Office in Greece, with funds from the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development. It is held under the auspices of the Embassy of Albania in Greece and is organized by the Frances Rich School of Fine and Performing Arts in collaboration with The Demos Center of The American College of Greece.

Exhibition Assistants: Evangelia Ntampanli, Anthi Stergiou (Αrt History students, Deree – The American College of Greece)

Graphic Design: Georgios Theodorakakos (Graphic Design student Deree – The American College of Greece)

Graphic Design Supervisor: Melina Constantinides (Graphic Design Instructor)

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Mama Klorin, 2024
Video still
Courtesy the artist

 

Dust collector, 2018-2024
Acrylics on ceramic tile
32 x 32 cm
Courtesy the artist
Photography by Thodoris Tempos

 

Magic liquid, 2018-2024
Acrylics and resin on found ceramic bathroom tile
20 x 15 cm
Courtesy the artist
Photography by Thodoris Tempos

 

Bucket, 2018-2024
Acrylics and resin on found ceramic bathroom tile
30 x 30 cm
Courtesy the artist
Photography by Thodoris Tempos

 

Mama Klorin, 2018-2024
Kitchen towel, thread, fabric, pen, graphite, charcoal, cardboard, acrylics, oil paints, bin bags
Dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist
Photography by Thodoris Tempos

 

Dy Çufot, 2018-2024
Acrylics and resin on found ceramic bathroom tile
34 x 34 cm
Courtesy the artist
Photography by Thodoris Tempos

 

Mama Klorin, 2018-2024
Clay
Dimensions Variable
Courtesy the artist
Photography by Thodoris Tempos