East of Eden 2000

The installation East of Eden was first shown in September 2000, in Athens, in an alternative space during the Vavel Magazine Annual International Festival.
Despina Meimaroglou was inspired by an article in a daily newspaper about young girls from an ex-Eastern Block country who ended up being sold as “sex-slaves” in Western European cities.
As part of the above mentioned installation the Six Girls’ Portraits are hybrid constructions, created in the computer by the artist.
Meimaroglou has blended facial features of women appearing in glossy life-style magazines and, in a symbolic way constructed new faces featuring as consumer goods. Depicting super models; abnormal and unreal, but also most significantly and hauntingly, victims of their own common fate - falling into the underbelly of society.
Their faces, blown up and unreal could belong to victims of deadly acts, dead, arrested, missing persons...or they could simulate portraits of new martyrs.
The Six Portraits measuring 89x79.5cm each are printed on high-Gloss photographic paper and exist in an edition of 3.