"stella plumbea, Latin for ‘dull star’, is a series in which I explore the visual language of discarded tabloid magazines."
Ariadne was born in 1999 in Limassol, Cyprus. She received a BA degree in the History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art. Works mainly with collage and magazine cutouts, exploring tensions and juxtapositions that exist between images once foreign to one another
What does your art represent?
My art represents the years of mindful and mindless contemplation of art itself. In my works, I see visuals that I came across years before. I take all that I see and make it into something which is part of my own vision. My background in art history made me attentive to detail, and my art practice takes advantage of that to the fullest extent. Thematically, something which I find to be a recurring pattern in all of my works is the subversion of the male gaze which dominates the printed media. I take the image of the female body and make it a vessel of power rather than a passive object.
Adamans, 2020
What are you working on at the moment?
I’m always working on ways of emulating what I’ve done in the past and pushing it into new directions. Right now, I’m focusing less on images from recent magazines and publications - also less fashion magazines - and looking at older printed material. I find it extremely refreshing to be able to take an image that was printed decades ago and giving it new meaning in a contemporary context.
soup, 2020
What is a piece or series of your art that you’re particularly proud of?
Though I am my biggest critic, I would say that the ‘stella plumbea’ series embodies a very key turning point in my practice. Through it, I have been able to push visual boundaries that I haven’t ever before. It’s an anthropological approach to fame and stardom and their fleeting nature. Here is a small description that I wrote about it: stella plumbea, Latin for ‘dull star’, is a series in which I explore the visual language of discarded tabloid magazines. The sensationalised narratives of the lives of the once public figures which they followed and the photographs used to depict these are decontextualised from their origin and place them in tension and at times, in conversation with each other. These magazines pose an interesting contradiction between royals and people who had their fifteen minutes of fame as well as following scandalous court trials and housewives cooking their favourite dinner party entrées. A majority of the people featured in these stories now live in obscurity and their stories no longer seem to shine as bright as they once did.
untitled, 2021
What would you consider to be the most challenging aspect about being an artist?
Being an artist is in itself hard to define. I would say for me having to reinvent and maintain simultaneously is what preoccupies me the most.
Sororité, 2020
What are your main sources of inspiration?
Sources of inspiration to me are endless. The art of Sigmar Polke, the writings of Joan Didion; 1970s advertisements for tanning oil, Elizabethan-era portraiture; the melancholy of Edward Hopper, the audacious colours of Cy Twombly; the honesty of Cindy Sherman and the other- worldliness of Peter Sato; the kitsch of Cher and the gravity of Nina Simone. I can go on and on for hours. What comes out is an ideal, in my mind, equilibrium between these antitheses.
untitled, 2021
Check out Ariadne's artworks:
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