Today we’d like to introduce you to Eurydice Eve
Hi Eurydice, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Eurydice Eve is a feminist writer, artist, scholar and podcaster, founder of Art Against All Inc. since 2008. Eurydice is the author of Satyricon USA (Scribner), f/32: The Second Coming (Virago) and other books. Eurydice was born, rather poetically, on Lesbos Greece, moved to LA as a teen immigrant on her own, earned five University degrees, worked as an investigative staff writer for Spin magazine and a professor of Creative Writing at Brown University, and has appeared on international radio and TV, incl. C-Span, Sky Channel, Channel 4, CBS, ABC, NPR, Amsterdam TV, in magazine features and in bookstores, theaters, universities, slams, churches, and literary panels. After 9/11 and the birth of her daughter, Eurydice left NYC for the sanctuary of Miami Beach. Her art has been featured in shows in Europe and the U.S. and is in permanent private collections and museums. Eurydice Eve won recognition for her hand-stitched tapestries, flag collages, and plexiglass mobiles. In 2010, she had a ten year retrospective in Miami Beach. In 2011, Eurydice organized an art unfair under the title “Occupy Art Basel” in a 10,000sf exhibit space across from Art Basel Miami Beach. A cutting-edge commentary on art as currency, the event was attended by over a hundred thousand visitors and covered by the Miami Herald, Time, Time Out, NBC, the New York Times. With hand-stitching and hand-drawing as her artistic media and the female nude as her theme, Eurydice “bridges high and low aesthetics in an ecstasy of satire and connects the viewer with past generations of silenced women for whom she hopes to speak.” Eurydice says her artwork is committed to “the age-old tension between the natural flesh we inhabit and our sociocultural constructs about it; between the bodies we are and the marks we make to capture them.” Her collectors have no idea that the artist Eurydice is also the “Eurydice”: the legendary writer whose cult following was formative to many in New York’s turn-of-the-century millennial underground in the halcyon days of late 90’s Guerrilla Grrrls alt-culture era. Her highly original ground-breaking book F/32 was considered the “most dangerous novel ever written by a woman.” It was followed by 1999’s tour de force, Satyricon USA, which dove into America’s postmodern sexual landscape.
In all her work, Eurydice Eve mulls on the constant reification of women, on the female pleasure principle and on the male gaze.
Her art has a bait-and-switch effect: you get turned on and you get turned off. Large-scale wall hangings of hand-stitched female forms–a nod to temple art–are both seductive and confronting. Felliniesque punk collages of mythical women, violently hacked at with scissors, stitched together with the hand-dyed thread of feminine embroidery.
Eurydice Eve works with ancient crafts that bridge her Eastern and Western heritages, high and low culture, and link the language of culture with the pulse of nature.
Eurydice Eve incorporates visual and incantatory symbols in her quest to use language against itself. Eurydice reverses the patriarchal logos and male gaze to reflect the viewer, showing the suppressed truths they were constructed to hide.
Eurydice is also the host of Speak with Eve podcast and the founder of Universal Mother Income (UMI).
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The main struggle of the true creator is to not be tempted by the promise of job security and social prestige and tribal acceptance. When you invent things or create stories and images from scratch, you don’t get paid by the hour or by the job. You may not even sell the work in your lifetime. You are driven by inspiration, passion, trust, the divine spirit or the Muse, none of which translate into easy secular success. You lose years of income and wealth to build a new product or artifact or philosophy.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Eurydice Eve is known as a feminist author, artist, scholar, and podcaster. Eurydice is a multimodal creator, the owner of Art Against All Inc., and the proud founder of the Universal Mother Income, UMI, initiative, an economic and social reform movement aimed at supporting new mothers (and primary parents) and addressing cultural inequalities. Her work has a significant presence in both the literary and artistic communities. Eurydice Eve has been recognized for her contributions to journalism, where she worked as a staff writer and columnist for magazines like Spin, for which she broke stories on fringe topics that chronicled the moral decline of America. Eurydice’s expertise led to the publication by Scribner of her nonfiction book: Satyricon USA, a book that foresaw the emergent cultural wars.
Eurydice Eve was born on Lesbos, Greece, which influenced her artistic and ideological perspectives, because of Sappho’s association to lesbianism. After 9/11, Eurydice moved from NYC to Miami Beach and decided to focus on art rather than literary notoriety, having just become a new Mom. She valued her privacy and her artistic integrity over commercial success and viral exposure.
Along with “Satyricon USA,” Eurydice Eve has published “f/32,” and “f/32: The Second Coming,” fictional satirical critiques of contemporary love and romance, and the female body in patriarchal language and Western thought.
Eurydice hosts the podcast, “Speak with Eve,” where she engages with audiences directly, and discusses topics that align with her feminist and artistic interests and endless curiosity.
Eurydice Eve is a renaissance-style cultural figure who advocates for change, explores human relations, engages critically with societal norms, and challenges cultural and economic narratives through her unique fearless blend of art, scholarship, and activism.
The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
The Covid-19 lockdown forced me to take a break from activism and community engagement, gallery exhibitions and investigative research travel. It quieted my mind to such an extend that I was able to see the Big Picture. That was how my earlier proposals for a Universal Artist Income, conceived during the Occupy Movement, informed my advocacy for the unpaid never-ending labor of mothers around the world, who incidentally were the first to lose their job in the COVID-19 crisis. I came up with a precise plan to pay mothers for the first 6 years of their child’s life starting retroactively at birth and to raise the funds not through general taxation but voluntary contributions. I ran the numbers, did the calculations, and put together a contract between mothers and the greater society. The UMI proposal included free College tuition or accreditation of any kind to those Moms (or primary stay at home parents).
Pricing:
- Hand stitched fabric art for sale $600 to $6,000
- Support my Substack. It depends on reader support.
- Support my podcast. It depends on listener support.
- https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/speaksex/support
- https://www.paypal.me/Eurydice
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Eurydice.net
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/EveEurydice/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EurydiceEve/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/EurydiceEve/
- Youtube: https://Youtube.com/@EveEurydice
- Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/speaksex/support
- Other: http://linkedin.com/in/eurydice-eve-kamvisseli-3409a15
