by Dan Caragea
Niram Art Website
If my memory doesn’t fail me, I do not know, in all art history, of an artist in whose genesis did not lay the fertile kernel of another artist, like seed of inspiration and interior aesthetical blossom. The beginning of any creator is partly epigonic, partly a gesture of breaking away from his teacher. One cannot renew anything without having experienced the nuisance of “the exercises of admiration” and whoever thinks otherwise is either blind or lying to himself.
Mara Athanasios’ universe of ideas originates from Romeo Niram’s Humanography. She assumes this openly as two of her photographies are proposed as explicit links to the painter’s work. Apart from these “replicas”, she opens a door in which the feminine mystery, the accentuated shadows, the lingerie, the hidden face, the intimacy closed in ephemeral gestures, the black and the red, the photographic instance are elements that allow us comparative reflections.