Manto Mavrogeni (1797-1840), a genuine child of Mykonos, was a heroine of the Greek War of Independence that came to be known as the “Greek Revolution.” She was a pioneering female role model, a woman who stood against gender stereotypes of the time due to her participation in the armed struggle and her own attitude in her personal and social life. 2021 is the one-hundredth anniversary of the start of the Greek Revolution.

A young, beautiful woman of upper-class lineage, Mavrogeni garnered the interest and admiration of philhellene artists as early as during the Revolution. The lithographs by the Danish artist Adam Friedel, who painted her from nature, are a characteristic example. Meanwhile, her story and her activities became known around Europe thanks to novels and short stories published in Paris during the Revolution.

The exhibition “Manto Mavrogeni: the Greek Revolution heroine through the eyes of today, at the Municipal Art Gallery of Mykonos, ” focuses on the historical contours of her action, placing emphasis, inter alia, on her portraits and historical archives. Her extant letters, kept at the State General Archive, paint a picture of a selfless patriot who sacrificed her personal life and assets for her homeland and revealed the refusal of the newly-established Greek state to recognize her services. As a result, having lived in destitution, she died before her self-sacrifice, and her homeland had acknowledged her selflessness.

By modern standards, Manto was a woman who was excluded from the public arena and her contemporary Greek historiographers. Yet, through her personal choices, the Greek Revolution heroine challenged the conventional notions of the time in practice. Not only did she engage in revolutionary activity herself, but as a partner of Demetrios Ypsilantis, she claimed a political meaning for her presence by his side vis-à-vis the historical conditions at the time. The exhibition is enriched with the contemporary visual approaches of ten visual artists who use their mediums of expression to shed light, under today’s gaze, on the multi-faceted and multi-dimensional personality of Manto Mavrogeni echoing to our days.

The artists participating in this exhibition with original works are: Artemis Alkalay, Annita Argyroiliopoulou, Irene Kana, Pelagia Kyriazi, Michalis Manousakis, Antonios Panagopoulos, Aggelos Papadimitriou, Jannis Psychopaidis, Ifigeneia Sdoukou, Dimitra Siaterli, Aggelos Skourtis, Marios Spiliopoulos, and the curator is Irini Savvani, Art Historian. The exhibition opens in Mykonos on September 1, running through September 30. For more information about cultural events and travel in Mykonos, visit Anthony Grant's Greek Column at greekcolumn.substack.com.

Source: Pam Price