Handbook of the Spontaneous Other
Aikaterini Gegisian, collage, Handbook of the Spontaneous Other
“My favourite collages I will put into two dividing categories: the erotic and the non-erotic.”
“Aikaterini Gegisian’s use of the mirror effect ... becomes autopoietic — the image of the female “self” maintains and reproduces itself.”
“... leafy wallpaper, a pink flower plant, silhouette portraiture in gold frames and rifles hung on the walls, walking sticks with ivory handles, and a stuffed owl in glass sits on the mahogany sideboard.”
Handbook of the Spontaneous Other
by Aikaterini Gegisian, published by MACK books
★★★★★
WRITTEN BY SARA MAKARI-AGHDAM
‘Walking in circles. The movement of the sun has already changed the colour of the landscape. We are left in darkness. Like the eyes touching the eyelids. We are not confused. We speak. We are the Other uprising.’
Aikaterini Gegisian, Handbook of the Spontaneous Other, 2020
Handbook of the Spontaneous Other is a labour of love — the Greek-Armenian artist Aikaterini Gegisian spent years amassing materials to create the collages in her newest book published through Mack this year. The book is hard-cover, canary yellow with a gold circle on the front and comprises of fifty-nine collages. (In total there are an impressive one-hundred and eighteen pages of images.) At the end of the text the artist has written four pages of back-to-back poetry — which is unusual as one might expect the poetry to be at the front, and it reminds me of trying to read Arabic or Persian books at the library, making the book different for a Western reader.
In studying the artist’s collages, it is important to look at the standout themes and how the artist renders them significant, constructing them through her own personal lens — the lens of ‘the Other’. The ‘Other’ in postcolonial theory describes an exotic person of foreign origin or strange character, often seen to be violent in nature. Edward Said was perhaps the most eminent cultural critic to talk about ‘the Other’ in his 1978 text Orientalism. The artist clearly identifies her own differences and thinks about issues that arise from ethnic hybridity. Aikaterini Gegisian’s collages are created from a collection of photographs from 1960s and 70s National Geographic magazines, advertisements, pornography, tourist brochures — a concoction of distinctly American and European paraphernalia. Considering ‘the Other’ and how ‘the Other’ came to be construed, stereotyped and homogenised, I do not therefore feel it necessary to compare Aikaterini’s collages to that of Western collage artists, such as Hannah Hoch, John Stezaker, Laszlo Moholy Nagy and Katrine de Blauwer.
Aikaterini Gegisian, collage, Handbook of the Spontaneous Other
My favourite collages I will put into two dividing categories: the erotic and the non-erotic. The “erotic” works involve both the male nude and female nude making highly sexualised appearances in the photographs juxtaposed together. Gaining popularity in Ancient Greek Art and antiquity, the male nude celebrated machoistic display, and in the mid-4th century BCE, Praxiteles sculpted the first life-size female nude of its kind, Aphrodite of Knidos in Athens. Thus, the nude seems an appropriate choice of subject for an artist with Greek heritage. In Handbook of the Spontaneous Other the nude is sprung from the time of the sexual revolution, disinhibition and liberation — porn existed underground for gay men (in 1967 homosexuality was legalised), and the heteronormative porn industry was thriving. Playboy culture promoted “porn chic”. Just like Ancient Greek Art and antiquity, the gay porn industry of the 1970s hailed athletic and lean male bodies in bodybuilder poses. In 1960s and 70s film, Kenneth Anger and James Bidgood veered towards the homoerotic, with both directors having a distinct phantasmagorical quality in their films. Bared in the collages of Handbook are sprawled naked bodies with faces in orgasmic ecstasy and sunbathing brown torsos. A woman lies in front of a satin backdrop in nothing but smoky eyeliner, a black star censors her nether regions — as if a mirror reflects below her, the artist has cleverly placed another photo with an array of mustard coloured mid-century glass vases, some phallic in shape. Mirrors often featured in Surrealist art and Surrealists were often criticised for their portrayal of women as objects of male sexual desires and fantasy. As a female artist, Aikaterini Gegisian’s use of the mirror effect therefore becomes autopoietic — the image of the female “self” maintains and reproduces itself.
Aikaterini Gegisian, collage, Handbook of the Spontaneous Other
Aikaterini Gegisian, collage, Handbook of the Spontaneous Other
Living spaces are presented continuously, contrasting the domestic with intimate moments. On a double-page spread immersed in crimson is an unidentifiable bent-over woman on a latex covering in red thong and matching red stilettos, engaging in what can only be seen as BDSM practices, her gloved hands tied behind her back. In the background is a Victorian decorated living room of leafy wallpaper, a pink flower plant, silhouette portraiture in gold frames and rifles hung on the walls, walking sticks with ivory handles, and a stuffed owl in glass sits on the mahogany sideboard. At the end of the book in the black and white themed section, a perfectly coiffed woman sits on a television, again the woman is seen in the domestic home space as she looks down at her sexy crossed stockinged legs. Technology is a reoccurring theme in Handbook of the Spontaneous Other –– alongside the radical changes in attitudes to sex, 1960s and 70s saw great technological advancement. Other “erotic” images are of round bottom cheeks, pink jelly dildos entering vaginas and pictures of vaginas shot from different angles. In nearly all of the collages that are juxtaposed with other photographs, the juxtaposition is nearly always with an object, whether everyday or a precious antiquity, and in some cases depictions of nature and fertility. A man, looking down (like the woman sitting on the television) masturbates stark-naked, to his left are autumnal trees and below him is an Asian vase in lapis blue with orange koi fish. Further on in the book another unclothed man kneels (as if mercifully) and above him a cat hisses.
Aikaterini Gegisian, collage, Handbook of the Spontaneous Other
The black-and-white final chapter includes scenes of a bloody religious ritual where Italian Christians (Guardia San Framondi) gather to flagellate themselves in Rites of Penance — looking at the white hoods at this current time of civil and racial unrest is disturbing. The white hood has been a symbol of fear and hate since ever it was worn by white supremacist Klansmen, even with its own mail-order catalogue in 1920s America. By the 50s and 60s, probably the date of Aikaterini’s Rites of Penance collage, the Klan was a significant and violent opponent of the growing Civil Rights Movement.
To conclude, Handbook of the Spontaneous Other is the next best thing to seeing the artist’s work in a gallery a — “must have” artist’s book for the summer season. Like, the gold circle on the cover, the reader cycles through two decades of visual history. Handbook is a passionate illumination of life’s journey and eros, (and the Greek origins of the erotic are significant here). The artist herself as ‘the Other’, reveals many things to us and in turn is heard.
Aikaterini Gegisian, collage, Handbook of the Spontaneous Other
Handbook of the Spontaneous Other is available from www.mackbook.co.uk, ISBN: 978-1-912339-69-3