Postcard from New York, 2019-2025
7 instax photos and 6 printed film stills from Theodoros’ performance in New York in 1973

Among the recorded actions shown in Tele-manipulation, we see footage of Theodoros carrying a Matraque-Phallus in the streets of New York and raising it to the sky while pitched between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, alluding to skyscrapers as phallic symbols of power. During a recent visit to New York, artist Paky Vlassopoulou performed a feminist version of this gesture for the needs of the work Postcard from New York (2019), replacing the Matraque-Phallus with a rolling pin and wearing a mask made of bread.

This work was created during the artist’s participation in the New York-based visual arts residency programme International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP), supported by ARTWORKS through its founding donor, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF). The work was sent, in the form of an email, to a curator friend, in which she wrote, among other things: “I am sending you here, from America, from New York, from the dream place of every (western-oriented) artist. From the city that successfully spawns myths and seduces crowds, and where one of our own, a native, tall, handsome artist, walked its streets in 1973 and did what he always enjoyed: feed his arrogance and produce surplus value. So, as I have told you at some point that I would do, I couldn’t help but follow in his footsteps.’
 
Paola Palavidi, Ioannis Koliopoulos, and Dimitris Antoniou helped implement the action.