Nikos Charalambidis

b. 1967, Cyprus

1 – The project’s main objective is to promote humanitarian principles and to support the International Red Cross.
2 – Everyone can become involved in this workshop/exhibition by donating old clothes.
3 – More than fifty students from the Limerick School of Art & Design will create costumes using the donated clothes and deriving inspiration from the artworks, the issues and imagery attached to the entire ev+a 2006 exhibition.
4 – The costumes will be offered for sale and the money raised will be donated to the Irish Red Cross. When the workshop comes to an end, the artists, with their co-operative partners and lots of volunteers, will wear the new creations and hold a demonstration through town. Raising socio-political and subtle provocative questions, this happening will be in sharp contrast to traditional elitist fashion shows.
5 – The reference to the Red Cross practices apart, what I had in mind was Michelangelo Pistoletto’s La Venere degli Stracci (1967). The statue of the Goddess of Cyprus, Venus, which the artist employed in his installation, and the old items of clothing which dress it, brought back childhood memories. I remember vast quantities of clothes coming mostly from America to provide relief for the refugees from northern Cyprus during the 1974 war.
6 – The workshop could follow an essential formula of activities, or could be developed in an all-encompassing environment (see image below). In that case, a central convertible structure, made from white fabric and formed in response to the architectural outline of my residence, could provide the specific conditions in which the participants could join forces. A range of appropriate audio-visual data, in combination with the videos from the participant artists, could be projected on the fabric walls of the construction, creating a contradictory and heterogeneous atmosphere. Along with the interventionist strategy of the whole event, and in addition to its practical yet allegorical service, this construction could operate as a full-size protest placard for the demonstration.
7 – In the event that some of the donated clothing might be worn-out, it could serve as raw material; accessories like buttons, zippers, embroideries, etc, could also be useful. By the end of the workshop, some of the remnants and the leftover materials could be stored in Tupperware as relics of the ritual acts, and join the rest of the Tupperware from previous stages of this travelling progressive series of workshops/ exhibitions.
8 – The participatory process of the ‘Tupperware show’ is going to continue its journey at various locations and venues, in collaboration with museums, organisations, universities and foundations, taking various forms and following a different work plan each time. The final goal of the activities is the construction of a mock wall, using all the produced Tupperware containers’ works, at the Green Line in Cyprus. The Tupperware Plastic Monument, as a collective political gesture, is a fragile and ephemeral construction – a wall that unites, in direct contrast with the walls that separate and divide.

(Text: give(a)way catalogue, 2006)