In Rania Emmanouilidouโs works, human forms are immobilized; perpetually frozen on the verge of some movement, whose before and after are insignificant. As are the reasons that set this movement into gear. Here, thereโs only the verge that both signifies and manifests. The verge fulfills Emmanouilidouโs characters. They were born with the verge; they carry the verge. They are full with gestation. As if this is their only occupation: they carry gestation itself. Why?
If our adherence to the verge favors a state of precarious balancing and preparation, meaning expectation, then these human forms are probably bracing themselves for something, they are expecting, hoping for something. For what? I guess Emmanouilidouโs characters are anticipating their future potential โ and the extension of this future potential in perpetuity. This is a hedonistic extension, secretly looking towards the preservation of an internal hope โ humankindโs most basic hope: the hope for transformation.
Perhaps this is why they postpone settling into a definitive position and stance. Perhaps this is why it is not obvious whether these figures are willingly hiding from us or whether someone is concealing them; whether they are turning a blind eye or whether they are blinded by someone else; whether they know or not. They experience the expansion of the extension in a way in which โif they knew the wordโ they would call โstoicโ. But they donโt know this word โ they donโt know any word. They sense though, I guess, that around them โa while before or a while after the vergeโ the worldโs corners, the dangers and the terror, are lurking, always threatening. They might even know that hostilities of all kinds pre-existed or will exist anew out there. However, the figures themselves are made with the absence of white: they are well familiar with black. This is why they gladly bear their prolongation, they are filled with the mechanism of preparation, they live in the limbo of suspension.
This borderline situation, however, is in no case stemming from cowardice or fear. On the contrary. Living under the shelter of extension, postponing for a while longer โand yet a while longerโ their movement, those figures slowly and silently weave โthrough this moratoriumโ their exalted oratorio: a deeply existential wish. They look towards their ontological growth.
Emmanouilidou knows that still lifeโs โnatura morteโ is nothing but the motionless but condensed โstill lifeโ of life.
This immobility is rampant.
Vasilis Amanatidis (poet, translator, art historian)
