How do you make sense of the present if you know there is no future? How do you relish the moment if you know that tomorrow, or the day after, won’t come; that you are about to loose everything – your career, your partner, your children, the joy of seeing your grandchildren grow, to loose yourself. Death is the last thing you would think about when you talk to Polixeni Papapetrou. Diagnosed with terminal cancer, you can’t help but think about eternal life.
For a Melbourne lawyer who gave up her career for what began as a hobby in photography, confrontation seems as the most appropriate word to define her life. Confrontation with the passage of life; confrontation with reality, our desires and what makes us happy. Even the controversial image of her naked then five-year-old daughter Olympia was confrontational. Confrontation with the socially tolerable and acceptable borders surrounding nudity in art that tried to condemn the child’s nudity in Papapetrou’s. And confrontation with her own death through her artwork, when she features her daughter Olympia dressed as a rat wearing a mourning dress.
For an Australian-born daughter of Greek immigrants, art could not be a choice. She was expected to become a teacher, doctor, lawyer – as the majority of immigrants’ children were. But her talent and artistic gift didn’t hide for too long. It was the monograph by Diane Arbus, that allowed Polixeni to discover her own connection to photography. The famous American 1960’s photographer ventured into worlds of transvestites, people beyond the norm, circus performers – and she captured them.
“So many photographic artists in world have been inspired by Arbus’ work. She is someone who ventured into unusual worlds. Even though others ventured into the underbelly of society, they didn’t document them and bring them to our attention, as Diane Arbus did. And she did it very well,” Polixeni tells Neos Kosmos.
At the age of 41, Polixeni decided to pursue her art career, and trade the suit of a lawyer for a photographic camera. Since than, she has become a highly praised artist internationally, with over 40 solo exhibitions and more than 70 group exhibitions held in Australia and internationally. Her series, or “bodies of work” as she keeps referring to them in her calm and serene voice, often feature her two children, Olympia and Solomon. Their collaborative work is a win-win game for both Polixeni and her children. For the 14 and 16-year-old teenagers – who are an integral part of their mother’s work – to be involved in this collaborative work is a play but more so treasured experience as they enter adolescence.
Once you come across Polixeni’s work, the impression that you experience is that someone has just put a frame in your dreams, your childhood plays, fairytales, childhood itself. From portraying different identities – from Elvis Presley to Marilyn Monroe impersonators to body builders and circus performers – once Polixeni became a mother, her work shifted to focus on childhood.
For the artist, childhood is that transition between the worlds – the world of infancy and the world of adulthood. The representation of childhood and exploring identity are in the heart of Polixeni’s art.
“I guess from the very outset of my practice, my work has explored what it means to be human and how we construct our identity. In the earlier years I was photographing a lot of people who were role-playing, such as female impersonators, Elvis Presley fans, body builders and andMarilyn Monroe impersonators. When my children were young, I was intrigued by their play and in particular their role-playing, watching them as they mimiced the adult world. I was fascinated to see them construct identity, and how they performed the various roles and games as young children. And, I guess this is a normal part of growing up and developing. We enjoy the spectacle of children playing dress-ups, but I think that there is more going on behind these games, and that’s what I wanted to look at,” Polixeni tells Neos Kosmos.
Inspiration for Polixeni comes through from many forces – whether it is inspiration from art history, 19th century tableaux vivant photography, film, literature and onserving children’s imaginative lives.
“Inspiration can come from the experience of living your life and as these experiences bank up in your imagination they can be expressed in the work,” she says.
In her works following the ‘Art Monthly Australia’ controversy, the subjects of Polixeni’s work have been camouflaged, appeared more dramatized by theatrical costumes and wearing masks. The images have moved to being made in the studio to the world beyond the home, against the backdrop of breathtaking Victorian landscape. Perhaps this was Polixeni’s response to “scandal”, as she felt that it was not necessary for her subjects to be identified as Olympia and Solomon and so on, but she wanted her subjects to speak about the condition of childhood in a universal and objective way, By disguising the identity of the subject, the subject became noone in particular, but a symbol of everyone.
In one of the main objectives of the artist as an observer, Polixeni proves herself. With her inimitable and unlike-anything-else work, Papapetrou’s artwork is the unique view of the world through the artists’ eyes. This year, her work has been showcased at the exhibitions in New York, Bogota, the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne and the National Gallery of Victoria.
In October 2012, Polixeni was told she was free of the breast cancer that was discovered five years earlier. A month later, severe symptoms revealed that the cancer had returned in her peritoneum. This time, untreatable. The initial diagnosis had a profound effect on her work, as Polixeni tells Neos Kosmos, in that it set her free of boundaries, pre-existing scripts and narratives. The one and only limit was now her imagination.

Inspiration can come from the experience of living your life and as these experiences bank up in your imagination they can be expressed in the work.

“I felt that there were no boundaries anymore, and that I wanted to take some risks with my work. Prior to making Between Worlds, the work was more structured and it was based on narratives, known stories or had a precedent in art history, or I was commenting on cultural phenomena. But Between Worlds was not based on anything I had seen or known or experienced. I wanted to make images that were the product of my imagination,” she tells.

The idea that lies behind the body of work Between Worlds, that will be showcased in The Hellenic Museum, was to look into the status of children as “other” in our culture. Her work focuses on transitions – to and from childhood, transition between infancy and adulthood and transition from human to animal.

“In this work, I wanted to think about children being Other to adult in the same way that animals are other to human. I think there are certain groups that we identify as Other because we are forever comparing one group to another, both groups being divided by age, social status, religion or race. Children remind us that we are adults and for this we see them as different or other to us. Animals also remind us of who we are, that we experience an emotional realm that they may not have. I wanted to collapse these two notions of Otherness, animal and child into the one body. I’m also fascinated in how children experience animals, and do so in a very different way to adults. Children initially experience the animal kingdom as a fantasy and entertainment, because they are introduced to animals through storytelling, animations and stuffed toys; whereas the adult experience of animals is filtered through other means such as farming or through pets. In the early years of childhood animals reside in the child’s imaginative world. I wanted to introduce that element of fantasy and imagination in my work.”
And that is what Polixeni has been doing through her art. Giving the frame for eternal life to our childhood, our dreams, our ideals and fantasies.

Someone said once that people who live forever are those whose works are left behind them. Good art doesn’t have expiry date. Neither does the legacy of Polixeni Papapetrou.

Polixeni Papapetrou exhibition “Between Worlds” is on at Hellenic Museum (280 Williams Street, Melbourne), from Tuesday 9 July to Thursday 8 August. The official opening of the exhibition is on Monday, 15 July. For more information and to see Papapetrou’s work, visit her website www.polixenipapapetrou.net