STATEMENT: Not everything is pink as it looks

The artwork by Delphine Dénéréaz, “La Chaumière” (2025), that recently was presented in Paris, reminded me of a personal journey that began in 2019 in Athens with the project “Weaving the Future”, as well as of the research that has preceded it over all these years—since 1997—on manual labor and the way it is used today in contemporary art by both women and men artists. A journey both inward and outward, which we are preparing to bring to completion soon…

Having traveled a long road over these five years, with artists and spaces continually shifting, a network of relationships and reflections has been woven, with the conviction that much has changed in the world of women, in the household, and in interpersonal relationships. This journey has now arrived at the present, investigating the dimensions of a contemporary trauma stemming from the practices shaped by the social and economic conditions of an almost warlike era after the Economic Crisis and the long period of confinement due to Covid. It is within this context that gender-based violence and femicides emerged at the forefront, raising new questions that women artists are called upon to examine and re-examine—not only on the Greek but also on the international art scene—since it illuminates all the fissures that permeate the home and domestic space through women’s manual labor. After all, not everything is rosy and fairy-tale-like, as it appears in this particular work…

Photo: Delphine Dénéréaz, La Chaumière, 2025, Weaving of reclaimed linens, cotton, warps on grid, Variable dimensions, © Delphine Dénéréaz, Courtesy the artist and Chapelle XIV

Efi Michalarou
21/8/2025