Starting June 1st all the way to July 28th, Emi Avora, an artist we had the pleasure to view within the last year, will be exhibiting at The Apartment Gallery in Athens, Greece. Originally from Corfu, resident in London, Emi's work has the "splendid" capacity to capture you inside a room, a place, an interior, decorated by her intelligent perspective on our common history: past, present, and perhaps future.

As a linguist, I can't but help to ponder upon the title of the exhibition and the correlation with Emi's involvement in the soon to be launched Mir Fabergé Art Journal. The precious "inutilité" of the Fabergé eggs has always delighted my attention and the only appropriate adjective I can find to describe them is probably: splendid. Splendid - splendore - doesn't have to have a purpose if not that of delighting the self.

There is, however, a substantial decadence in that word: as if the splendid could only last a few instances. The work of Emi is full of splendid things, her ability stands in capturing  them together in one place, deciding how to dispose of them. The cinematic installation held at The Apartment Gallery is to this effect most intentional. Her work covers interiors that are not in all equal to our modern apartments, they recall things past, things dreamt, atmospheres that haunt the observer telling stories within stories.

Exactly what Fabergé Eggs do going beyond being objects of delight, created to please, yes, but also ambassadors of greater stories in History, as well as personal ones. Within the Mir Fabergé Art Journal project, an ambitious one to say the least, the glory of the past and its splendid decadence, wants to reunite with the present. Emi Avora was asked to create for the first issue of the Journal, Eggs.

To start or continue stories that are splendid, no matter how intentionally past-forward, or ironic, the title of her exhibition "The Splendid Years". Were they really splendid?

Read the Interview with the artist on Swide

Text by Acelya Yonac

Images courtesy of Emi Avora