Cindy Sherman Presents Striking New Exhibition at the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens

This year, it’s the turn of Cindy Sherman. For over 45 years, the celebrated American artist has turned the camera on herself, deftly morphing into more than 600 different personas. The Cycladic show focuses on her early—and most iconic— photographic self portraits. At its core are the “Untitled Film Stills” (1977-1980), the seminal series that Sherman began in New York at the age of 23. Hung in its entirety, the 70 small, black-and-white images retain their power to beguile and intrigue while gently critiquing the performative masquerade of femininity seen in film noir, Hollywood and B movies, but also beyond the screen.

She explores “how the image can be an impactful means of creating not only a social identity but an identity itself,” suggests art historian Deligina Prifti, giving a tour of the show that also encompasses Sherman’s subsequent color photography: Rear Screen Projections (1980), Centerfolds (1981) and Color Studies (1981-1982). Four decades on, many of these images have become well-known, yet they remain enigmatic and ambiguous, as well as notably prescient—dramatically foreshadowing the social-media selfie and today’s ever more blurred boundary between reality and artifice.

In the context of the museum, a parallel is drawn between Sherman’s portrayals of women and the collection’s revered Cycladic figurines. From the archipelago southeast of mainland Greece, the 3rd millennium BC marble sculptures (a number of which are newly displayed at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art) are described by Prifti as “silent symbols of female of empowerment”. For Marietta Kypriotaki, assistant curator of antiquities, “these figurines, with their accentuated breasts, pubic area and sometimes a slightly swollen belly, are most likely the ideal representation of a great mother goddess. These lines,” she add, pointing to a 2700-2400/2300BC example with multiple grooves across the stomach, “probably represent stretch marks.”

“The Museum of Cycladic Art is an archeological museum that carries the history of the role of women through centuries: mothers, wives, lovers, concubines, priestesses, warriors, or Queens,” writes Gonou in the exhibition catalogue. To coincide with the Sherman show, a number of the collection’s artefacts have been brought together in a display titled Multiple Roles of Women in Antiquity, when women were typically married at 14, men at 30, and “the contexts in which women existed were generally suffocating”, reads the exhibition text

But Sherman’s relevance to modern-day Greece is more striking. “Her work resonates deeply in a world grappling with the shifting dynamics of traditional gender roles and the alarming rise in violence against women,” writes Gonou. She cites the case of a 28-year-old woman who was stabbed to death by her ex-partner outside a police station in the Athens suburbs. “This really shocked women in Athens,” she says. “At the Museum of Cycladic Art, we felt the urgency to address these pressing issues through an exhibition that delves into the core of identity construction and the evolving roles of women and men.”

The show is part of a broader focus on women artists in Athens. “In Greece, women are gaining more power and women artists more attention—something that was long overdue,” says Sandra Marinopoulou, the president & CEO Museum of Cycladic Art.

At the National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens, EMST, which opened in 2020 in the cooly repurposed Fix brewery building, the programming for 2024 is titled “What If Women Ruled the World?” Across a cycle of exhibitions, the entire museum is being taken over by women artists and artists who identify as female.

“It’s a kaleidoscopic, rich, multicultural, multi-faceted celebration of women artists of all ages,” says Katerina Gregos, artistic director and CEO of EMST, of the project that is currently in its fourth iteration and includes solo exhibitions by Los Angeles-based Iranian artist Tala Madani and American documentary photographer Susan Meiselas. “It was especially important for us to make this statement in an arts institution in Greece, which has never had an organised feminist movement in the visual arts.”

Gonou adds: “We still have a long way to go but the fact that many cultural institutions are led by women gives them the opportunity and responsibility to address these issues.”

Cindy Sherman at Cycladic: Early works is at the Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens (cycladic.gr) until November 4