Freedom or Death, (Democracy or Erebus), 2021
“Τhe flag of a country from a spiritual distance it is just a symbol, but from up close is the death, the revolution and the stories that made this symbol. In my flag, someone can see the reference of the Greek flag from the distance, but from up close we will see the achievements, the fights, the battles, the heroes, the ideas, the dates of the revolution and everything that made us what we are today. False or correct these stories fulfil the contemporary Greek world and depending on the perspective are being transformed from information to knowledge. White for Freedom and Democracy. White for Death & Erebus. White for the viewer who wants to recognize himself through Greek history transversing a spiritual and artistic distance. This is the story of the historic Greek revolution. This is my flag.”
Migration Crisis (2013 – )
In 2013, the violent escalation of the immigration crisis, characterised by large numbers of refugee flows and human losses, is reflected in the work of Yannis Psychopedis. Investigating the function of the work of art as a social testimony, Hermes Psychopompos (work 2) is created through the appropriation and transcription of the symbolically charged images of Hermes of Praxiteles and the widely recognisable migrant trafficking vessel. The three heads of Hermes, psychopompos, helper and escort of the newly deceased souls to Hades acquire an apotropaic character protecting the occupants of the shabby boat. In the symbolic complexity of the work, Hermes leads, protects and accompanies the desperate immigrants in a symbolic journey of resistance to the morbid sovereignty of death.
Austerity Programmes (2009 – 2018)
In 2014, when austerity programs extended and the economic crisis in Greece exacerbated, the work Etat Volema (work 3) was presented at the offices of the Greek Permanent Delegation in the OECD (International Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) in Paris as part of Constantinos Xenakis’ exhibition No Way Out. During this period, the Greek delegation was negotiating the Second Economic Adjustment Program for Greece at the exhibition site. Examined in the historical and political contexts of its exhibition, the poignant title Etat Volema, incorporates the artist's perspective into the OECD problem, indicating that there is No Way Out for Greece since the economic problems derive and reflect a broader policy of Volema (an inherently Greek mixture of clientelism and nepotism).
Dictatorship (1967 – 1974) and the metaphor of the “political body”
Dictatorship and the metaphor of the “political body”
The metaphor of the human body as a symbolic field of depiction of the political reality and subversion of Junta’s rhetoric runs through Vasso Katraki’s Situation IV (work 4). The barbed wire and the mutilated human figures, exhibiting ostentatiously their amputated corporeality, break through the viewer's visual field undermining the regime’s medical-political rhetoric of remediation.
Redefining the relations between representation and reality, Dimitris Alithinos incorporates real objects (rope, leather, canvas, tubes) in Untitled(work 5) involving the viewer in a mental and sensory process of exercise on the blurred boundaries between the real and the represented. Utilising this ambiguity, the composition emblems art as a form of symbolic resistance to the usurpation of freedom. More clearly, the leather case with the tubes, the essential tools of the artist, resembles the case with ammunition, emphasising the socio-political dimensions of art. In addition, the suspension of the belt with a rope triggers a series of disquieting associations with the hangings of political dissidents. These associations are enhanced by the intense corporeality and plasticity of the belt.
Depicting one of the principal emblems of the dictatorial regime, the Alexis Akrithakis Untitled (the cannon) (work 6) deconstructs and reconstructs poignantly the symbolic system with which the coup plotters of April 21 1967 invested the overthrow of democracy. More clearly, the phallic protrusion of the tank from which bloody reds flow, combining military references with dictatorial ideals of virility, confronts the viewer with the sanguinary consequences of militarism and the stereotypical ideas from which it emerges.
Without abandoning representation, Athena (work 7) is involved in a multi-level enquiry of metaphors and sharp medical-political references. Gabriella Simossi appropriates, visualises and artfully overturns the well-known metaphor of Georgios Papadopoulos in which the "political body" is presented as a bedridden patient whom the surgeon must "tie" to the bed in order to heal him. In this interpretive context, the symbolic "tying" and silencing of Athena, protector of arts and letters and patron saint of the Greek capital, undermines the propagandistic images of "remediation" of the "political body".
Dictatorship (1967 – 1974) and political subjects
Dwelling within a postmodern horror vacui, the "little men" of Yannis Gaitis are gathered, massed and levelled, composing the claustrophobic background on which the words POLYPHONY DISSENSION ASSASSINATION dominate (work 8). The caustic idiom outlines an ominous causal relationship in which pluralism and reasonable disagreement, the foundations of democracy, lead in totalitarian regimes to the assassination of political dissidents. On a semantic level, the composition constitutes an implicit reference to the colonels' obsessive attachment to the ostensible purity of the Greek language. The sharp references of the verbal addition are reinforced by the mechanistic reproduction of uniform, passive figures that in the political and historical contexts of the work acquire a symbolic character.
Constituting, according to the engraver, "emotional recordings" of the political reality, A. Tassos' Slaves (works 9 to 11) belong to the White-Black 2 series created during the dictatorship. The title of the works in combination with the situation of complete subjugation of the captives compose an acrid political allegory that cauterises the usurpation of freedom. At the same time, the repetition of the iconographic theme, the rough engraving, the frontal posture and the shaping of the figures refer to the Byzantine iconography, evident in the halo that surrounds Slave No 1, and give a transcendental character to the handcuffs sharpening its symbolic dimension.
Post-war political turmoil (1950 – 1967)
Through the successive layers, engravings and erasures of the surface, the works of the Homage to the Walls of Athens 1941…19 series (work 12) "recreate" according to Vlassis Caniaris "the impression of the walls of occupied Athens". Bearing the traces of the gestural process, the consecutive layers visualise the primary psychological process of condensation of the numerous stimuli, experiences and traumatic memories of the Occupation and the Civil War into one image. In this light, the composition as a social and political testimony is the ideologically and symbolically charged material carrier of the resistance and the subsequent socio-political struggles, while at the same time emphasises the traumatic topicality of the issues during the period of intense uncertainty that followed.
Belonging to the iconographic circle Mothers, which is being introduced during the Occupation and the Civil War and runs through the work of Vasso Katraki, the engraving on sandstone Mothers with a Dead Child (work 13) marks the transition from wood engraving to the innovative technique of stone engraving. The solid monumental figures are rendered with Doric roughness, accentuated contours and expressive eyes that face with awe the devastating effects of the Occupation, the Civil War and their modern social violence. In this difficult economic and social context, the mothers, passively carrying the dead new-born in their arms, turn into macabre incarnations of the widespread uncertainty and political turmoil of their time.
Civil War (1944 – 1949)
As the result of a process of reconstruction of the eidetic images of the Civil War (1944-1949) and their transformation into woodcut engraving, A. Tassos Athens 1944 (work 14) depicts a period of escalating violence between battalion guards and ELAS members. The intense elongation, the deep engravings and the detailed rendering of the accentuated anatomical structures of the ossified face sharpen the transcendental character of the image. At the same time, the placard in the centre of the composition, replacing the derogatory signs that hung on the chests of the hanged people by writing "Traitor", defines the temporal and spatial context and specifies the hanged person. He is an anonymous comrade of the engraver, a historical figure whom the nine-years distance from the events renders a symbol of resistance to the chauvinism of the battalion guards.
German Occupation (1941 – 1944)
Being part of a series of seven wood engravings created by Vasso Katraki during the German Occupation, the small-scale works Funeral during the Occupation, Hunger during the Occupation and Breadline during the Occupation (works 15 to 17) capture the daily life of the period in the urban centres and the countryside.
The engraver, inspired by the repeated rituals of survival (waiting for food, starvation and funeral processions) imposed by the reality of World War II, etches on the wooden surface numerous compositions of bony figures. The curvature and stiffness of the bodies, an ominous reminder of the impending rigour mortis, make it difficult to distinguish between the living and the dead and intensify the tragedy of the image. Deprived of their human characteristics, the disembodied figures become anti-heroic, anti-militaristic symbols, visualizing the dehumanizing effects of war.
Greek Revolution (1821-1830)
As a reference to Greek Revolution, sculptor Theodoros appropriates, deconstructs and reconstructs one of the eminent emblems of the Greek revolutionaries, the helmet. However, Suicide Helmet ’64 (work 18) is stripped off of its protective character by carrying inside it a sharp protrusion that threatens with a fatal blow anyone who tries to wear it. Echoing the vitriolic spirit of Dadaist objects, the helmet becomes a conglomeration of protective and destructive forces, an anti-militarist symbol that pays homage to the Greek resistance against the Ottoman administration underscoring the effects of the atrocities.
Constituting a representative sample of the youth works of Costas Tsoclis, the central axis of which is the human figure, Blind Father Nestoras (work 19) investigates the special case of the homonymous fighter of the Greek Revolution of 1821. Papa-Nestoras refusing to betray his comrades, was blinded by the Turkish-Egyptians after the defeat of the revolutionary army at the Battle of Kremmidi (1825). The fighter managed to free himself and dedicated himself to religion. The noble simplicity and the quiet grandeur of the solid form of the fighter are imposed on the viewer, tranfering him to the gloomy reality of the Revolution of 1821. At the same time, the concrete corporeality of the figure combined with the intensified blindness make the figure a symbol of the Greek Revolution.
Secret School (work 20) of Nikolaos Gyzis draws its iconographic theme from the homonymous historical belief which it embodies emblematising it in the modern Greek cultural consciousness. Apart from the questions regarding its extra-referentiality to reality, the work is an outstanding example and visual counterpart of the mythical performative rhetoric of the late 19th century that symbolically invested the birth of the national ideology of the newly formed Greek state. In the dim light of the composition, the internal antinomies of pre-revolutionary Greece are transformed into the oppositional scheme Greek-Turkish, according to which the young Greek children resorted to the "secret school", where the local clergyman taught them.
In the ideologically charged field between myth and experienced reality, the Secret School marks the end of this exhibition and aspires to set in motion a collective course of understanding and dealing with our contemporary modernity through the symbolic power of art.
