On the 8^th of March each year across the world, an open invitation encapsulates the theme of gender equality. It invites us to reflect, to ponder, to discuss a timeless issue concerning the inappropriate and ominous nature of discrimination and the mechanisms that give rise to intolerance.

How might we trace gender relations in another era, based on different realities and other social connotations?

This periodical exhibition, which launches the series “Dialogues”, brings into conversation two expressions of the feminine and the masculine in Cretan art. This challenge is attempted by presenting, for the first time in the Museum, two marble statuettes from the Greco-Roman period (2nd century AD) and contrasting them with wall paintings, masterpieces of the heyday of the Minoan world (16th-15th century BC). The cultural contrast is obvious. Herein lies the challenge of Counterpoint, inviting us to adopt a different gaze, through a series of thematic tours that will take place in March and April 2024.

Let us look at the Bronze Age murals as an art intervention, as paintings that invoke and designate the status of different genders in the social context of the time.  Let us see the sculptural expression of later historical times as a dazzling presentation of the volumes and figures of the gods representing aspects of human gender and suggesting moments of the post-puberty of girls and boys – incompatible yet perfectly compatible attractions of a different youth. Let’s look at all of the above through the eyes of the artists who reflect the perspective of their society.

Because the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion offers itself for the exploration of the depiction of the human figure, opening a window onto the ancient societies of Crete. At the edge of the horizon the coexistence of genders emerges as a timeless universal value, most relevant and self-evident for the creation of a better world.