UNTITLED ( COLLAGES )

Two middle-aged men prop up a female body whose head has been replaced by the smiling face of Uncle Ben—a haunting emblem of colonial nostalgia repurposed as absurd icon. Beside them, a child in military uniform stands suspended between parade and protest, innocence and indoctrination. 
In what Loukia Alavanou calls a counter-propaganda montage, the three diptychs lay bare the disturbing ties between race, performance, power and control: The arresting compositions are not simply collages, but visual sabotages. Found imagery detonates into a tableau of historical trauma and present complicity. (Text by Irini Karayianopoulou)