Irene Georgia Tsatsos
I have always made artwork and identified as an artist, even as a child, yet my public-facing career as an adult has been as a contemporary art curator. I got seduced by this role when I was just out of art school over 30 years ago. By performing as a curator, I could maintain a creative practice that I perceived of as being more socially accepted and less risky. I could protect my vulnerabilities by hiding part of myself behind the work of others, and I would be more loved. This is understandable when considered along with my background from a lineage of people whose survival depended upon careful study of those at the center of power, learning their invisible codes and boundaries, their idiosyncrasies and protocols, as well as if not better than their own dreams and desires.
This survival skill was accompanied by both pride and resentment. Now, I am calming that psychic inflammation. I am finding safety by resisting capitalist and patriarchal notions of productivity that permeate everything around us (including the nonprofit industrial complex, where I’ve worked for 30+ years) and by recalibrating my relationship to my labor. I am reclaiming balance and unscripted dream space and the healing they bring and I am illuminating the personal practice I protected by suppression all those years ago.
Let’s Play (2023)
Horses romp in the sand on the beach under the sun’s glow. This image is inspired by themes of clarity, repair, recovery, reciprocity, renewal, and transformation, along with salt, sand, and the healing properties of the ocean, all in the light of The Sun card of the Marseille tarot, the deck I’ve learned on.