Lykourgos Porfyris’s Kakurlackó Order: Department of Culture and Heritage focuses on the representation of albinos and albinism in occidental history and contemporary pop culture. From the era of colonialism and witch hunts to contemporary culture industry (e.g. The Da Vinci Code book and film), albinism is felt as ominous, obscure, supernatural, demonic. Recent attempts to de-stigmatize albinism by adopting images of albinos in marketing campaigns contribute to a fetishistic objectification of albino "whiteness." Drawing upon his personal research and experience as an albino, Porfyris comes to terms with processes of demonization / fetishization by iterating, synthetizing, and narrativizing the unknown story of albinism. The Department of Culture and Heritage belongs to a medieval monastic albino order, a hunted Gnostic herecy. The Department presents unseen, undocumented paintings by medieval albino monks, secretly preserved scriptures, engravings, and albino psalms testifying to the quieted history of albinism.

#albinism #colonialism #popculture #objectification #demonization #fetishization

photos: Nysos Vasilopoulos, 6th Athens Biennale 2018 ANTI