One year of Kythera

The GEORGE “BEST” COSTACOS CULTURAL AND CANCER RESEARCH FOUNDATION

Presents

The New York City Book Launch of ONE YEAR ON KYTHERA

Photographs by Kristina Williamson

on Wednesday, June 25, 2014 from 7:30-10:00 p.m. at the Tenri Cultural Institute, 43A West 13th Street, New York, N.Y. 10011

The evening’s program will feature a presentation by the artist on her work followed by a book signing and wine reception courtesy of Eklektikon wines. A portion of the proceeds of the event will be donated to cancer research.

In her first monograph publication, Kristina Williamson explores the intersection of art, ethnography, and globalization in her close study of the Greek island of Kythera. In intimate photographs that cut across genres—landscapes, portraits, interiors—Williamson explores themes of memory and tradition in the faces of those who stay and the absences of those who leave. These images—shot in gorgeous 35mm film—eschew nostalgia and often probe deeper to a level of the everyday surreal, an ongoing theme in Williamson’s work.

“Few young artists have the depth of artistic vision that informs Ms. Williamson’s photography. Her images are complex and sophisticated psychological essays. Her photographic record of island life and society is a study crucial to its history and serves as comparison in determining both the changes and the survival of the island’s social and geographic landscapes,” says Artemis Zenetou, Executive Director of the Fulbright Foundation in Greece, of her work.

With the help of a J. William Fulbright grant, Williamson spent over a year photographing contemporary life on Kythera. Over the years, the island has suffered from massive waves of emigration of its people abroad to the point of near depopulation. This exodus caused the population of Kythera to drop from about 13,000 at the beginning of the twentieth century to a current mid-winter population of 3,000, leaving entire villages stripped of younger generations and some completely abandoned. To the remaining Kytherians, these deserted homes and communities stand as visual reminders of a society once unified by tradition and now transformed by ambitions of a different life abroad.

KRISTINA WILLIAMSON is an American artist born in Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania in 1980. She holds a BFA in photography from Parsons The New School for Design in New York and was awarded a Fulbright grant to photograph life on the Greek island of Kythera. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions in Greece, New York, and Washington, D.C., as well as various group exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad. Williamson currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

THE GEORGE BEST COSTACOS CULTURAL AND CANCER RESEARCH FOUNDATION is a recognized 501(c) 3 nonprofit organization founded in 2009 to honor the memory and life’s work of the late actor/singer George “Best” Costacos who died of a malignant brain tumor at the age of 44. The Foundation’s mission is to promote, foster, and advance the professional pursuits of young artists, to support research on the etiology of cancer and to support improvement in the management of glioblastoma brain tumors. www.georgebestcostacosfoundation.org.