Fairyland 2006

In Fairyland Despina Meimaroglou presents her public with a series of large ‘snapshots’ taken in a gay bar in New York. For the spectator who is familiar with the processing methods to which she usually subjects her digital photographs in her work, the absence of any obvious intervention here may seem surprising. The photographs comprise by themselves a narrative centered on the daily lives of the regulars and staff of the bar. The camera simply records snapshots of these lives. The artist does not intervene, does not interpret, does not offer political commentary, and does not -as has been her custom- intersperse the flow of images with a parallel, critical discourse.
Meimaroglou’s stance towards the characters she immortalizes allows us to approach another facet, deeper and more real, of the relations which an individual develops with his/ her body and the gender dimensions of that body over the course of a lifetime.

The above text is an excerpt deriving from the catalogue of the group show Masquerades: Femininity, masculinity and other certainties, curated by Dr. Syrago Tsiara, Director of the Center of Thessaloniki State Museum of Contemporary Art (Dec.2006-Feb 2007).