The Nose, Set 3

The work’s title, The Nose, is lifted from Nikalai Gogol’s satirical short story, in which the central character’s nose falls off and takes on a life of its own. Here, Michelle Mantsio casts herself as the nose, on a journey and her temporary studio in Athens as the face it fell off. The work considers the idea of the artist and the role of the artist’s studio, and how social landscapes and cultural exchanges influence creative and interpretive processes. Mantsio invited photographer, Dionisis Andrianopoulos, to form new arrangements with the objects she had made or collected locally, blurring the boundaries of artistic identity. Fusing elements and ideas across time and place, Mantsio offers viewers a window into her studio, and an opaque portrait of the artist—or is it Andrianopoulos?