Flora Citroën is the founder of ‘Curated by Lolita’, a new online initiative which sends a digital exhibition directly to your inbox every month. “We’re trying to examine ways in which personal devices can be transformed into spaces for transformative art experiences. “

This month, they produced a new solo presentation of work by Cypriot-born artist Adonis Archontides, who uses simulation to explore the nature of virtual phenomenology. Wallerstein was digitalised and inserted into Archontides’ world via avatar embodiment.

What inspired you to begin and create Curated by Lolita?
I created Lolita one year ago. I wanted to create a place where I could exchange and produce in collaboration with artists and curators. As an artist I did not want to wait for an institution or a project to invite me. I realised I had visual and discursive accointances and interests for some works… that there was this digital space we could use and transform, crossing borders with no big financial means.

How would you silhouette or summarise this project and the concept behind it?
The idea of using the email both as the space and as the channel of a show occurred as soon as I had decided to created a digital space. I wanted to go into the viewer’s life rather than summon them, and integrate the intimacy and daily life in the process. Receiving an email with an exclusive curated artwork directly on your phone is quite the opposite of the idea of the traditional newsletter. On the contrary, there is the idea of gratuity, of accessibility, of giving and I think it is beautiful. It also refers to Fluxus mail art practice that claimed to refuse the traditional circuit of galleries and institutions.

What factors influence the selected focus of each month’s exhibition?
At the beginning, the topic of the Lolita* character and it’s reference, reinterpretation and representation ever since were very present. I am still very into the idea of voluntary naïvety and of the « in betweens » stages of life and identity. Added to this, I can also realize that my own research and practice as an artist influences Lolita’s choices since I tend to work within the fields I myself develop: identity, intimacy, story telling, psychology, sociology… But that said, I also integrate curation into my work since I create different elements that I match to be an ensemble, and the ensemble ends to be the artwork. I would say it’s a principle of communicating vessels.

Can you tell us a bit about this month’s focus?
Wade Wallerstein is the first curator I invited for a collaboration. I asked him to curate the final month of Curated By Lolita’s first. year. Wade is very into digital curating and proposed this interesting form of interview, a widespread type of content. He proposed this use and twist of a popular form and created a talk with Adonis Archontides (the artist) which showcases and values the artist/individual. Adonis created 3D simulation stills to illustrate and punctuate the narrative. It is a very accurate way to talk both about identity and about what is implicit: the artist’s mind development and process. I would say it’s a fiction about one’s balance.

What's next for Curated by Lolita?
Lolita is curating it’s second collective and physical show in an empty apartment in Paris.
‘I Know You’re Out There’ is opening on June 27th.

There is, for Lolita, this desire of creating a social space for exchange. The show deals with the idea of alternatives our generation tries to find towards the ambient, congested, collapsed and disillusioned system and ideology.

But, if you are not in Paris, in June 25th, the released of the first song by Hugs’n’Drugs* will appear directly into your mailbox! Lolita is creating it’s image and communication in collaboration with Airbag Collectif. Hugs’n’Drugs opposes to violence :

“«joyful reclamation of tenderness, a revolution since being a baby is a radical response to a culture in which older generations have infantilised us without nurturing us, a rejection of capitalist productivity standards »*”

*novel character by Vladimir Nabokov, 1955
*Hugs’n’Drugs, by Hugs’n’Drugs (new duo composed of Aram Abbas and Félise de Conflans)