A SQUARE WITH A VIEW

athens, 2021

The work “Square with a view / Renewing the self-image of a square » is realized in the framework of the Station One Artist In Residence program. It is a collaboration with the Victoria Square Project and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Public Humanities Initiative (SNFPHI) at Columbia University, supported by Counterpoints Arts and Outset Contemporary Art Fund Greece.

The statue « Theseus saving Hippodamia » breaks its silence! Ιt speaks about its life, its roots and its movements, the bullets that it took, its thoughts about the people of the square. Through paintings and spatial installations, we create a counter-monument, challenging the existing one to revisit its myth in the light of Victoria Square’s contemporary reality.

There we set up an open-air exhibition, which consists of paintings on sheets hung from balconies surrounding the square. This idea required a door-to-door around the square to convince neighborhoods to welcome a sheet on their balcony. We noticed that the ones who accepted are more new-comers and foreigners, and office workers, whereas oldest Greek residents were more talking through intercoms and closed doors. Their fear is palpable, and sometimes their verbal violence accompanies it.

On the 26th of November, half of the people who accepted to host a painting came to the Victoria Square Project to carry the sheet to their balcony. The rain made this first procession even more special.

Photos by Alexandra Masmanidi

The pattern guiding the composition of the 8 paintings is the creation of news stories regarding the statue « Theseus saving Hippodamia ». This statue represents the abduction of Hippodamia by a Centaur that Theseus fights to save Hippodamia, while her maid is passively attending the scene. The choice of golden lines on white sheets embraces a mythological connotation of the new stories

Created in Germany, the statue was moved to the Syntagma square in Athens, and then in 1937 to Victoria Square. The painting represents this movement parallel to a typical Refugee path – destroyed house, dangerous see crossing, camp, wall…

The Victoria Square hosts many pigeons that come and go around and on the statue, becoming moving parts of it.

The survival blanket is used to cover people after a trauma, for example after being rescued from a sinking boat…

The Victoria Square project is located in Elpidos (meaning Hope) street. The white sheet is a symbol of hope and peace for the neighborhood.

In the square itself we place four statues that one can climb for an uninterrupted view of the paintings. From that viewpoint, for the first time in years, the living gaze intersects with that of the statue’s. « Theseus saving Hippodamia » comes to life through their eyes, while the living statues reflect on all the things that the statue saw over the years without being able to speak about them.

Hippodamia as a bird, made with children on the square

Pedestal plane no1

Pedestal plane no2

Pedestal plane no3

The residency asked the question « Who is the contemporary Athenian? », to which we tried to answer through a dynamic and plural prism : the Victoria Square hosts people from different backgrounds who have been living or coming there for a day, a month, a year, ten years, sixty years… we met a great diversity that is traduced with this gallery of portraits of Athenians.

Our all day-everyday presence on the square ended with an event on the 1st of December : a Procession. We walked around the square, moving the sculptures with people on it, with the involvement of inhabitants and the VSP team.

Photos by Alexandra Masmanidi

We exchanged greetings with the neighbors which hanged a painted sheet on their balcony