Machine Gun Beauty, 2008, Hand-Stiched Collage of Original Vintage posters and Photos on Paper
Garage Sale, 2008, Hand-Stiched Flag Collage
Support Our Troops for Operation Freedom, 2008, Hand-Stiched Flag Collage
Kill Them All & Let God, 2008, Hand-Stiched Flad Collage
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by Petra Mason 9/29/2019 Walking in Miami's winter heat towards a slither of land between the beach and wealthy Indian Creek billionaire bunker 'La Gorce' is somewhat surreal. In the part of town known as mid-beach where you never know who lives in which condo canyon, and most big buildings have high security and are harder to get into than some small countries. At any moment Lil' Wayne could be speeding past en route to his sprawling bachelor pad (complete with a skate board park) or Iggy Pop could be cruising by in his big black Rolls Royce or YBA Tracey Emin could be escaping the London freeze by checking into her Miami apartment. Quizzically seeking out Eurydice at her low lying greenhouse resembling abode, the petit artist appeared like a water sprite, guarded by two yapping, bouncing teacup poodles who, once indoors, proceeded to wrap themselves around her bare feet, slipper style. Swopping notes on our mutual past lives in New York and getting hopped up on Greek coffee, Eury (as her friends call her) showed me around her sun lit, studio like living space (her actual studio is in Little River, the newest affordable artist zone). One wall brims with works the artist describes as 'too tough' to sell: pleasingly abstracted, distorted female forms in mixed mediums. Close by in the corridor, large scale soft art pieces whisper secret tales, hand-stitched onto unprimed canvas and vintage silk sourced in India some years before. Eurydice is a woman with a past, a present and a future whose story began (rather poetically) having been born on the isle of Lesbos. Miami has, ever since her clove cigarette smoking arrival in the 90's provided sanctuary. Particularly since the birth of her daughter (who now goes to Bard College). Miami has provided sanctuary well, since New York turned into 'a serpent eating its own tail'. Preferring not to pre-Google my subjects too much, knowing how scrappy online representations of interesting people can be I had no idea Eurydice was also the Eurydice, a writer with a cult following, whose written work I remember as part of New York's turn-of-the-century millennium underground. Her book, the highly original ground-breaking book F/32 considered by Brooklyn based culture guide Free Williamsburg as 'the most dangerous novel ever written by a woman' was followed by 1999's tour of America's contemporary sexual landscape Satyricon USA. Feeling more than just a pang of nostalgia for the halcyon days of the late 90's New York Girls era, when alt.culture underworld's revealed new frontiers and things were moving forward so fast, no one would have believed, by 2017, how backward things would become. While women, media myths and sexuality loom large as subject matter, Eurydice mulls on the constant integration and objectification of women, and on the female pleasure principle. There is a bait and switch aspect to her work: you get turned on and you get turned off. Large scale wall hangings of hand-stitched female forms, a nod to all the great images of bathers in art history are both seductive and confronting. Fellini cast members cut 'n pasted into punk-ed up collages of women viewed through heart throb Marcello's eyes, violently hacked at with scissors while the thread of feminine embroidery stitches it all together, providing the pulse to 'sexist pig' Fellini's broken narrative. Artwork by Eurydice can be viewed as part of the current and ongoing through February 2020 exhibition on at the Betsy Hotel in Miami Beach. Deborah Plutzik Briggs, Vice President for Marketing and Philanthropy curated the exhibition has “given over pretty much all of our spaces to artists” - answering a call to put Miami artists front and center on the beach during Art Basel and beyond. Ends. |