ELENI

2015, Shaved velvet
Dimensions variables
Installation view from the show Renaissance Stories (2015) | Athens & Epidaurus Festival + NEON
Photos © Nikos Markou, Courtesy NEON

Influenced by the political events of that year, I drew a woman’s back on a piece of velvet and hung it like a corpse. Hands – braided braids – open, as if preparing to fly free. But the weight of her legs hinders her; multiplied and transformed into mythical griffin heads, filled with the velvet fluff that fell when I shaved her back and which I collected with great care.

When I read Helen by Euripides, I found extremely pioneering the fact that a man of that time removes the guilt of the Trojan war from Helen and gives her a voice, allowing her to speak in the first person from the prologue itself. This position is also supported in G. Seferis’ homonymous poem, while Y. Ritsos’ Helen, although old and abandoned, “light as air, independent, is the embodiment of love – free from the fear of death and time“.