Freedom is the state of not being enslaved to any ideology and believe system
'Eleutherophobia - fear of freedom' (11’11”) explores the potential to formulate a New Human Identity as a response to the dissolution of the foundational myths and institutions upon which our culture is predicated. Karpowicz’s response is framed by the realisation that identities structured around ideologies, belief systems and difference not only fail to serve us as individuals, but bring greater division and polarisation amongst communities.
‘Eleutherophobia’ acknowledges the deficiency of the existing social order to give individuals access to the context and tools they need to actualise their full potential. Karpowicz dissembles a disturbing landscape of human pathology and dysfunction, then conducts an autopsy, articulating her own subjectivity through the psychological shocks that threatened to define her. Appearing nude, in ironic accordance with Western art’s preoccupation with the naked female subject, she wryly acknowledges her social positioning as a woman. To exist as either an edenic innocent, passive and decorative, or as a commodified fleshy reality, sexualised in the gaze of the spectator and equally disempowered. Neither process Karpowicz can control any more than the wars that have defined the territory of the place she was born.
Positing a place beyond the heavy layers of indoctrinated identity, ‘Eleutherophobia’ is a violent expulsion of the past to reconfigure a self through lived experience and joint aspiration as humanity. Karpowicz challenges us all to ask what does it really mean to be free and how do we get there?
