Anastasia Douka's 'Kids blowing' at Callirrhoë, Athens

Anastasia Douka's exhibition 'Kids blowing' at Callirrhoë in Athens explores themes of motherhood, childhood, and the tension between construction and deconstruction. The title references a graffiti photograph Douka sent to the writer on March 18, 2018, with the subject line 'On breastfeeding,' depicting a building in Neos Kosmos near Stegi that has since been demolished. The exhibition features a handrail running along the right side of the gallery, divided by color like phases of life, beginning in blue. Douka incorporates references to Dionne Brand's 'The Blue Clerk' and includes a work by another artist, an academic painter portraying a child smoking. She also presents a graphite drawing and oil painting of 'The Little Struggler (The Smoker or A Fine Kind)' (1887) by Georgios Iakovidis, encountered at the exhibition 'Fernweh, or Nostalgia for Unknown Lands' curated by Katerina Hadji at the Irene Y. Panagopoulos Collection. Douka's practice is characterized by an immediacy of construction with layered conceptual and emotional connections, often using materials playfully with sensitivity and humor. She believes that 'everything constructed can break, be reconstructed and then break once again.' The exhibition includes her series 'Animalier With No Taste for the Sublime' (2017), featuring paper casts of public sculptures.