National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens

EΜΣΤ is pleased to announce the first solo presentation in Greece of the critically acclaimed photographer Lola Flash. Working at the forefront of queer visual politics for more than four decades, photographer Lola Flash’s work challenges stereotypes and gender, sexual, and racial preconceptions. An active member of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) during the time of the AIDS epidemic in New York City, Flash was notably featured in the 1989 “Kissing Doesn’t Kill” poster. Their art and activism are profoundly connected, fueling a life-long commitment to visibility and preserving the legacy of LGBTQIA+ and communities of colour worldwide.

SALT (2011–ongoing) is a series of portraits that feature iconic women aged over seventy, who have had a quiet impact on their respective worlds and are still passionately engaged in their life’s work. In a culture where beauty is equated with youth, these women are not only beautiful but accomplished and making significant contributions to society. This intimate portrait series reflects their wisdom, attractiveness and power which is often disregarded because of ageism.

The subjects of the exhibition include, among others, Tony Parks, photographer and daughter of legendary photographer Gordon Parks; Koho, a master sumi-e painter; and renowned activist Esther Cooper Jackson. The portraits were taken where their subjects felt most at home, in order to capture the texture of their private lives.

SALT aims to challenge the erasure and invisibility that older women experience and to highlight the deep-rooted cultural and social biases that remove them from the public sphere. Flash works in the tradition of twentieth-century portraiture, using a 4×5 large format camera, as they believe that this process conveys the importance of the sitting to the subject, and yields a truer image.

https://www.emst.gr/en/exhibitions-en/lola-flash-salt