Installation in the building of the Belgian Archaeological School of Athens (EBSA):
11 frames with instant photographs taken from 2006 to 2012 and a paper construction.
The art exhibition ΤΩΡΑ, with guests Alexia Karavela and Lysimachos Polychronidis,
was held in the context of the lecture series: ATLAS - Archaeological Topographies Current Trends in Landscape Archaeology & Spatial Analysis.
The exhibition was curated by EBSA's Assistant Director Dr. Tina Kalantzopoulou.
The photographs replace the works that normally decorate the walls following
the route from the EBSA building’s garden to the library, and in some cases, they are
framed by time’s imprint on the wall. This placement emphasizes their small size,
which is by default contradictory to anything monumental.
Through the use of distorting lenses or by composing single photographs in groups, the images transform from apparent documentations of reality to glimpses of a fleeting moment. We can detect objects we know as symbols of the ephemeral, as they appear in vanitas images (flowers, food, fabrics), coexisting with timeless materialities such as rocks and the sky.
Arriving at the library, we encounter a skeleton — the ultimate symbol of memento mori. Between
the books and the accumulated earthly knowledge stands a 3-dimensional
paper simulacrum of a human skeleton in natural size.
The fragility of life and matter is something people working in the field of archaeology face every day. Their findings, however big or small, will always be thin slices of space and time in the vastness of space and time.
