PROJECTS
The text house
2017
Group show, Greek archaeologists association
A book made of plaster sheets, wall paper and text, narrating glimpses of the life that ended in the house the materials came from. A huge nail also found in the site binds the pages together, serving as a metaphor of the wounded body and soul of the house.
Educational relics
In many areas in Greece numerous army training camps that were built since the 1950’s were eventually abandoned. As child, I was living very close to one such camp and used to play in it when nobody was there. I visited a similar camp some years ago and was fascinated by the fact that time has turned it into a monument for an era that used to be extremely authoritative – back then, also formal education felt a lot like army training. The place now is a huge area full of blocks of cement standing like obsolete books in a deserted library, to remind us of how young people used to be formed under extreme discipline and sterile authoritativeness, making us wonder how much things have actually changed and whether this lust for control still survives within us and our reformed educational system. Photoeching and printing have been chosen as the best media for expressing the time distance, the detachment from content and the ghost quality that haunts all ruins.
An alphabet of pebbles
2013-2014
Travelling letters project, Helsinky Academy of Music
Pebbles are smooth unique natural sculptures, transformed through time by the gentle but patient force of water. When collecting pebbles on a beach, we go for the ones that break the general patterns of color or shape in a way that catches the eye. The veining on some makes them look almost like organic matter, like living organisms. Others seem to be engraved with indecipherable sacred symbols, alluding to some secret meaning that will always escape us. Such found signs cause the shattering of language and invoke the power of its existence beyond any text, introducing a deeper way of communication – just like a piece of music you love and for a few moments you just exist in absolute harmony with it. This mystical alphabet of pebbles allows us to listen for a moment to the echo of the thousands of waves that have formed them, sensing the power of the sound of life as a precious companion of our existence.
Lot's wife
2009
Printmaking Panorama, Technopolis
These images are about our desire to look back, remember or understand feelings or events of the past. While in this process we risk to be trapped in a zone of stagnancy, a dormant stage of being, were we become a kind of lifeless statue.
In Genesis Lot's wife becomes a Pillar of salt just because she looked back at the inferno of the burning towns. Our wish to re-experience by any means (looking at photos, reading diaries, sharing memories, etc. ) what is gone by is effecting our composure, as we increase our efforts to focus into the past we become less responsive. In extremis we can become statues, pillars of neutral elements that cease to exist at present. It is the price we pay for wishing to relocate ourselves from the present and offer ourselves as reflection surfaces to a past that wouldn't be present in any other form.
Transparent fabrics
This is an arrangement of folded fabrics that form a sort of cocoon, a refuge for our being. The membrane that keeps our current form together could recede, leaving us naked to our own freedom and the vast oneness of the universe. We, then, may try to refold it around us, in an attempt to hold on to the trace of existence and get the chance to transform the lived experience into some sort of deeper understanding – only to find that this void is what we are truly made of. The body itself is absent here, it is only implied by the empty space left behind. The lack of content and the silence that emerge within this space, create a stage where light is the protagonist instead of any image or form. With the specificity of the form disappearing within the light, we are allowed to sense what the deeper layers of our existence may be like.