Hedone

” Hedone “, a GTA Contest finalist project, is an intimate and provocative journey of pleasure, secrecy and identity.

The author, Maria Christidi, a student at Accademia Italiana, has chosen to address one of the most complex and universal issues-sexuality-through a personal and poetic lens, where vulnerability is transformed into a visual language.

Inspired by the Greek goddess of sensual pleasure, the work moves between confession and confrontation-a tale that explores the tension between desire and repression, visible and invisible, personal freedom and social judgment.

In the Cypriot cultural context, still marked by deep conservatism, where sexuality is often treated as something taboo, especially when it comes to women, Hedone becomes an act of defiance against the silence about female pleasure, a rebellion against the expectation that intimacy should remain hidden.

The images are imbued with the color red, the color of passion, flesh and danger, but they remain elusive, faded and distorted. They do not reveal, but rather suggest. They force the viewer into a voyeuristic role, making them question what they are seeing and how they perceive intimacy when stripped of context but charged with suggestion.

Reference Cluster:
Visual Arts

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