نبذة مختصرة : In August 2013, I created and performed a solo cabaret show titled Caryatid Unplugged at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. I devised the performance to explore and expose notions of belonging and otherness in relation to two female bodies in exile: my own and the Caryatid’s feminized body. I am a Greek expatriate artist who moved to the United Kingdom in 2010, at the beginning of the so-called Greek crisis. The Caryatid is the ancient Greek marble column that was forcibly removed from Athens during the Ottoman occupation, and now “belongs” to the British Museum. The performance presents a response to UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s 2011 refusal to return the Parthenon Marbles, including the Caryatid, to Greece, and to his suggestion to the House of Commons Liaison Committee in 2012, that the government should control Greek citizens’ right to enter and remain in the UK. Cameron’s statements caused me to experience an intensified sense of exile, which I explored in Caryatid Unplugged. This chapter investigates how this identity was challenged and negotiated through my interaction with the audience.
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