Tha Fas Xylo
Wood, found objects
2022
θα φας ξύλο / tha fas xýlo / are the words that are painted on the front of this drop cloth. From Greek, it translates to “you’ll eat wood” - a common threat given by mothers to disobedient children, warning them that if they don’t watch it, they’ll get ‘smacked’ with a wooden spoon. There is something so deeply analogous about the misbehaving child and the artist. The predisposition to question the world around them, to not be informed by social norms but behave & create according to intuition, and, most relevant to this piece, to square up to authority. For an artist, this spirit of freedom & boldness has not left them from childhood, but has morphed and grown and matured. Romanticizing rebellion is the lifeblood of a contemporary artist. This piece is meant to be an eager response to the phrase on the tablecloth. “Watch me.” The candles have been blown out and the food has gone cold, and the cloth has been marked by those who have sat at the table before us, so roused by the dinner time conversation that they couldn’t sit still to finish, but have embarked from the table into action. An artist becomes one by an inspiration that acts as a call to action, and the catalyst for every piece mimics those beginnings. This piece is meant to act as a moment frozen in time, a monument to the creative birth of the artists who have inspired us, and an invitation to sit at the table ourselves as young artists with the expectation that it will launch us into a place of hypercreativity without bounds.