Artwork
Εκφράσεις I
Εκφράσεις I is a photography by Athena Tacha. It dates from 1972 and is held in the collection of the Metropolitan Organisation of Museums of Visual Arts of Thessaloniki – MOMus.
About this work
The slices repeat but don’t match up, making the face look split and strange.
This photo shows a person’s face cut into six horizontal slices. Each slice is a different expression, anger, joy, surprise. The slices repeat but don’t match up, making the face look split and strange.
Tacha used her own body to study how small changes shift meaning. She wasn’t trying to show one mood. She showed how many moods sit in one face.
If this makes you curious, look up Tacha, Athena (1936).
Overview
Athena Tacha’s early 1970s photographic series investigates the human body as a site of movement and perception. In the works titled “Expressions #1” (1972) and “Gestures #1” (1973), she isolates specific anatomical regions, face and hand, to document the range of possible motions and the subtle shifts that accompany them.
Subject & Meaning
“Expressions #1” presents a single face divided into six horizontal bands, each band capturing a distinct facial configuration such as anger, joy or surprise. By fragmenting the portrait, Tacha reveals how multiple emotional states can coexist within a single visage, emphasizing the fluidity of affect rather than a singular mood.
Technique & Style
The artist employed a systematic, almost scientific approach, moving through each facial feature, eyes, nose, mouth, tongue, eyebrows, in turn and photographing every observable muscle contraction. The resulting images are presented as a grid of sliced sections, the layers misaligned to accentuate the disjunction between successive expressions.
History & Provenance
Created during a period when conceptual photography was gaining prominence, the series reflects Tacha’s broader interest in bodily performance and perception. Both works were produced in the early 1970s and have since been exhibited in various institutional contexts that explore the intersection of art, anatomy, and phenomenology.
Context
Tacha’s focus on the body aligns with contemporary feminist and phenomenological discourses that question the stability of identity and emotion. By using her own body as the subject, she foregrounds personal experience while also contributing to a larger dialogue about the representation of the human form in conceptual art.
Artist & collection
Artist
Athena Tacha (Greek: Αθηνά Τάχα; b. 1936 in Larissa, Greece), is a multimedia visual artist. She is best known for her work in the fields of environmental public sculpture and conceptual art. She also worked in a wide…
Museum
Metropolitan Organisation of Museums of Visual Arts of Thessaloniki – MOMus
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