ELEFSINA CATALOGUE VANA XENOU by 2023 Eleusis European Capital of Culture

1 VIOLA Bill. Statement Στο Robert Violette [Επιμ.]. Reasons for knocking Massachusetts: The MIT Press. 1989. σ. 174.

2 HOMÈRE. Hymnes. Παρίσι: Les Belles Lettres. 1976.

3 HÉRODOTE. Histoires. Βιβλίο II: Euterpe. Παρίσι: Les Belles Lettres. 1930.

4 PLATON. Phèdre. Στο Œuvres completes. Τόμος II. Παρίσι: Gallimard. 1950.

5 HADOT Pierre. Wittgenstein et les limites du langage. Παρίσι: Vrin. 2007. σ. 46.

6 HÉRACLITE. Fragments. Παρίσι: Presses universitaires de France. 1986. σ. 255.

7 SANCHEZ LEON Juan Carlos. L’Antiquité grecque dans l’œuvre d’Antonin Artaud. Besançon: Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté. 2007.

8 SENECA. Naturales quaestiones. VII. 30. 6.

9 NIETZSCHE Friedrich. Nietzche contre Wagner. Στο Jean Lacoste & Jacques Le Rider [Επιμ.]. Friedrich Nietzsche: Œuvres. Παρίσι: Robert Laffont. 1993. σ. 1227.

10 KLEE Paul. Théorie de l’art moderne. Γενεύη: Denoël & Gonthier. 1973. σ. 34.

11 POUND Ezra. Make It New Λονδίνο: Faber & Faber. 1934.

11 POUND Ezra. Make It New London: Faber & Faber. 1934.

10 KLEE Paul. Théorie de l’art moderne. Genève : Denoël & Gonthier. 1973. p. 34.

Friedrich Nietzsche: Œuvres. Paris: Robert Laffont. 1993. p. 1227.

9 NIETZSCHE Friedrich. Nietzche contre Wagner. In Jean Lacoste & Jacques Le Rider [Eds.].

8 SENECA. Naturales .quaestiones VII. 30. 6.

7 SANCHEZ LEON Juan Carlos. L’Antiquité grecque dans l’œuvre d’Antonin Artaud. Besançon: Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté. 2007.

6 HÉRACLITE. Fragments. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. 1986. p. 255.

5 HADOT Pierre. Wittgenstein et les limites du langage. Paris: Vrin. 2007. p. 46.

4 PLATON. .Phèdre In Œuvres completes Volume II. Paris: Gallimard. 1950.

3 HÉRODOTE. .Histoires Book II: Euterpe. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. 1930.

2 HOMÈRE. .Hymnes Paris: Les Belles Lettres. 1976.

1 VIOLA Bill. Statement In Robert Violette [Ed.]. Reasons for knocking. Massachusetts: The MIT Press. 1989. p. 174.

Vana Xenou

The proposal for an Open Museum aims to highlight Elefsina’s cultural heritage. During the prehistoric and historical past, Eleusis-Elefsina went through moments when it received into its body the displacements of ancient peoples until the 1821 Greek Revolution, the 1922 Asia Minor disaster, the Modern Greek State’s industrialisation with its attendant domestic migration and, today, its deindustrialisation.

Emblematic figures faced the conflicts, contradictions and crises of the 20th century and, to a certain extent, determined the subsequent course of the ideas about civilisation in the Western world. Between 1920 and 1930, major issues were raised regarding the crisis of Western civilisation: the return to the origins of Europe, the relationship with and cultivation of religion, such as the esoteric tradition, social revolution, the importance of language and writing, the concept of history – issues that would later be addressed by art theorists, psychologists, radicals, philosophers, who hovered on the edge of surrealism, constructivism and deconstruction. In 1920, at a particularly important moment in Europe, Ezra Pound propounded a renewal of cultural tradition, “make it new11”, as it is inconceivable it should be considered as simply copying the past and not as a complex interaction of innate tendencies, emulations and selforganising structures. The insistence on tradition, or rather on its power, where heredity, predeterminations, inclinations, possibilities and tendencies can act in a variety of ways, doesn’t correspond to the question of a deep-rooted behaviour.

The Living ,Museum the use of floor plans of the lesser temples or of the propylaea of the archaeological site of Eleusis in the way that they were presented had, as its inspiration, Piranesi’s Campo .Marzio

In European civilisation, the fragmented image acquired different meanings. It is a mental construction based on a critical restoration, itself based on the recall of the fragments relating to the concepts of vestiges and ruins. The fact of the dissolution of their primary aura is what makes them educationally priceless. During the 17th century baroque period, playwrights saw ruins not only as highly significant fragments, but also as objects destined for their own poetic construction. Giovanni Battista Piranesi used the illustrations of engravings he possessed that featured various ruins of Rome’s ancient past as architectural, sculptural evidence and not simply as elements of the past. In essence, he enabled critical imagination to conceive the city through a precise imaginary and inventive amalgamation of Rome’s monuments. In my proposal concerning

Historical nature and ruins the fragment

Believing in the revelatory nature of art, good fortune led me to discover the Eleusinian Mysteries’ important educational and initiatory process. If “art, for Paul Klee, does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes ”,10visible then the Nietzschean veil refers to the great tradition of the Eleusinian Mysteries and reinforces the belief that frequent visits to the mysteries in no way constitute some sort of autopsy of a soulless body.

(close your eyes) and marks the individual’s path in darkness that leads to the light? Does greeting the light, like Oedipus at ,Colonus constitute an egress into the light? And how do the persons who guided the initiate – Hecate with her eyes bandaged and Helios, the physical sun – become a cause of knowledge and revelation concerning the secret of existence?

Should one believe that the element constituting the entrance to the initiatory process is summarised in the command “

The term “Μύησις”, in its most general sense, indicated a body of rituals, whose purpose was to bring about a decisive change in the initiate’s religious, social and personal status. In philosophical terms, the initiation constituted the fundamental change in the initiate’s existential condition. The etymology of the word “Μυστήριον” helps us understand the mysteries’ visionary significance. In essence, it becomes apparent that, from the hidden or concealed, we are led to the manifestation and the condition of that which is seen. “We no longer believe the truth remains truth when the veils are withdrawn, - we have lived too long to believe ”9this... Nature hides itself because we don’t know how to see it, despite the fact it is right before our eyes. This hiddenness, then, has no intention of concealing, but of emphasizing the difficulty that exists in revealing the nature of the thing. A large part of 20th century thought was inspired by Heraclitus’ aphorism, the types and images invented by Ancient Greece.

which constitutes the Eleusinian cult, the δρώμενα referred to orgiastic ceremonies, although the hasty interpretation of the term “orgiastic” obscures the venerable mysteries. The word “ ργιον” means ergon and retains its essential meaning in the mysteries as actions.

belief of Artaud’s leads straight to the reference of an initiate at Eleusis, Seneca who includes a phrase that touches the deepest point of the Eleusinian myth and the initiation process: “Some things are not revealed once and for all; Eleusis keeps in reserve something to show to those who revisit ”8there. Seneca’s saying could be interpreted as referring to the idea of a ,veil which offers the possibility of covering and of gradually revealing. In the Eleusinian triptych

initiation – ceremony - epopteia (visio beatifica). I would say that this

It is essential to believe that not everyone is capable of performing this act which, in order to take place, also requires preparation. This observation leads to the threefold ritual act of the initiation process:

The playwright Antonin Artaud constitutes an important figure of the 20th century. He drew upon Greek civilisation for inspiration based on philosophy, the power of the mystical rituals, and tragedy, all of them elements of the true origins of Western civilisation. As early as in 1923, he considered that Aeschylus evoked a kind of divine terror, which was contained in his heroes’ gestures at a time when people were more sensitive than today. He called Seneca the greatest tragedian in history, as his relationship with Greek tragedy influenced his Theatre of .7Cruelty When talking about cruelty, Artaud tries to remove the everyday meaning of language, to break open the iron collar throttling it and to return to its etymological roots which, among the abstract assumptions about its meaning, continue to hold and prompt the sense of something concrete.

concerns the confrontation of two different systems, one of Greece of the earth and one of the city.

There existed, in 4th-century BCE Greece, a school of philosophical skeptics who brought life to a human scale through divine myths, on which the authentic Greek civilisation was based. It was these myths, whose subterranean and magical life was included in the Aeschylean drama, the core of this transition being situated during the period of the tragic crisis that occurred in Athens and which appears clearly in Aeschylus’s play .Eumenides This conflict

») (270-274). It would seem that, in the Homeric ,Hymn what the goddess asks of the people of Eleusis for herself in essence concerns man himself.

(476-479). This secret oration of the goddess to men has a character of protection, exactly in the same way as in another of her invocations when, establishing the rituals, Demeter seeks to appease her state of mind thanks to them: «

This cryptic sentence of Heraclitus, who was present in Eleusis and possibly initiated, refers to the infinity of Nature, which is not easily perceived. In the Homeric ,Hymn the Goddess Demeter draws attention to the fact that “she showed the conduct of her rites and taught them all her mysteries … awful mysteries which no one may in any way transgress or pry into or utter; for deep awe of the gods checks the voice”:

According to Ludwig Wittgenstein, the word ‘mystical’ appears as a synonym of “that which cannot be ”,5explained the unspokenthe ineffable. It appears, though, that when the mystical is identified with the ineffable, we are not simply referring to an ecstasy, but to a feeling, an emotion or experience, which, while including the feeling of affection, contains something alien which belongs to the sphere of an existential ethics. It could also be said that ethics explores the meaning of life, or that it makes life worth living, while also posing the question: “what is the way to live?” Ethics is therefore not limited to a code with which we can determine the correct way to act or how a utilitarian calculation would essentially like life to be. It appears to be something deeper, something too absolute to be able to be spoken.

Here, the significance of the ritual acts that the Goddess Demeter institutes / reveals is highlighted in the Homeric Hymn with the two invocations and her instructions leading, precisely, to the mystery, which is declared to be a veiled - secret reality.

The Eleusinian Mysteries were an expression of worship free of dogmatism; from Eleusis we hold the rituals, the effectiveness of the mysterious symbols, which project the conflicts and struggles of the opposites – in other words, the idea of the person who is whole. It is interesting to note the way in which Socrates, in Plato’s ,Phaedrus leads us to the initiation rite, through which evil was experienced as a part of existence, like light and darkness: “Beauty was there to be seen at that time, shining brightly, when in company with a blissful cohort we saw a blessed vision and contemplated it and performed, being whole and unaffected by those evils that lay in wait for us thereafter and we were initiated into the pure blissful ”4visions (250c).

πάντα3» (52.1).

The divine is present in the sanctuary, charged with divine energies. If we consider Herodotus’s etymology for the word “theos (god)” (from the verb ,θεώ to bring order to place; to array; to institute), the meaning of divine energy can be more easily grasped, because the Gods had established an order in the cosmos, as «

At the end of the Archaic period there is a moment when, on the fringes of the city’s official cults, a religious current appears that provokes reflections on the destiny of human existence and its relationship with the divine. “Happy is he who has seen such things”2 (480), we read in the Homeric .Hymn This reference in the hymn reveals the character of the initiates’ communion in the Eleusinian Mysteries, the union of the individual with the deity.

In the Greek language, there is a word whose content is inexhaustible, a form flooded by the sacred: “aidos”, which is usually interpreted as .bashfulness However, it is not the bashfulness towards a thing that awakes a feeling of constraint in us, but the sacred comprehension of the untouched, the understanding that expresses that which is not experienced today and appears contradictory, namely the fact that what is true remains a hidden, protected, wellkept secret. Here, it is worth recalling the Heraclitean adage:

As for the question of why Elefsina ,today it seems to be based on the quest for creativity in the sources, or rather in the eternally active forces of the primordial beings, which the initiates offered as a ray of light during the rituals.

If the body politic element refers to the difference and conflict within the collective phenomenon, ultimately it is within the category of the sacred that the concept acquires its most dynamic manifestation. The sanctuary was a particular space characterised by an open area and at the same time constituted a safe meeting point for different groups. The dialectics of openness and exclusion implied in the sacred space is therefore one of the most ancient manifestations of the body politic element. Thanks to the religious rituals, the ,hiera citizens enjoyed in common what they could not experience individually. Consequently, by examining the question of the sacred we can identify the latent conditions that continue to influence the city as a body politic today. For instance, if in their contemporary sense the words ‘community’, ‘participation’, ‘public nature’ are clichés, it is within the concept of the sacred that they acquire their most intense meaning. Philosophical thought and the sacred in Ancient Greece influenced leading movements in Europe, specifically from the 17th to the 19th century, from which arose part of my proposal to the European Capital of Culture.

The Sacred Yet despite the network of knowledge that allows us to define or standardise human experience in the private and public spacedomestic, social, recreational and professional- contemporary space has not yet lost its sacredness. It seems that all these contrasts bear a covert sacralisation. For many decades, Art, Architecture, architectural design sidelined the concept of sacredness; it was ignored as belonging to a non-rational sphere or to stereotypes of spirituality and contemplation. If we reexamine the question of how cities are established, it is interesting to focus on one of its most intense manifestations, the sacred space, as the city’s origin stems from the founding of the sacred space.

Awareness of a real world’s existence is connected to the concept of sacredness, as “the sacred is an element in the structure of consciousness and not a stage in the history of consciousness1”. It is difficult to imagine how the human mind could function without the certainty that there is something in the world that is indisputably real; and it is equally impossible to imagine that consciousness could appear without any meaning nor any connection with man’s impulses and experiences.

The choice of Elefsina as European Capital of Culture is important in the contemporary context, as it participates in the symbolism of the suprasensible in Western literature as one of the greatest sanctuaries of the ancient world, inspiring European civilisation through the Eleusinian myth and the initiatory and teaching process. The cultural crisis in the West led to a search for the origins of European civilisation; its significant intellectual contribution determined, to a certain extent, the subsequent course of ideas and culture in the Western world. Civilisation stems from religious faith, the importance of language and writing, a sense of history, the tradition of esotericism, and social revolution. The mythical beliefs and religious rituals were seen by European scholars as a necessary stage of humanity, so the study of sacredness became a way of tracing the latent conditions that even today influence the body politic of the city and help us understand a civilisation’s ethos.

The construction of the Supersensible in Europe

The Eleusinian Mysteries’ chthonian aspect can be understood in the light of the confluence of past and future. The allegory of the seed, the kernel buried in the earth, signifies the experience of the ancestors’ return or reinstatement, in such a way that it is extended to the future generations through the bridge of the ephemeral individual. The seed and the sprout contain an entire world of ancestral souls. The life of the individual is elevated to a model and becomes an ;archetype it leads to a restoration, a revival of the life of the ancestors who, through the bridge of the transient individual, pass on to the generations of the future. At the same time, the individual is saved from isolation and restored to wholeness. The whole of the ritual preparation, with its archetypes, aims at this goal.

This underlying sorrow constituted a structural element of the Eleusinian narrative. Birth is one of the central points of the Eleusinian myth; it concerns the conception of the rite of initiation, which was considered to be a day of birth, a birth day, and referred to the idea of death and rebirth, as the ritual banished the fear of death. It’s obvious that, at Eleusis, birth as a fact was considered to be something more than an intimate happening: through this condition, the individual’s mortality was counterbalanced and life’s entelecheia was confirmed.

For the Ancient Greeks, the name ‘‘ Ελευσίς’’ sounded much like the word ‘‘ λευσις - φιξις’’ (coming -arrival). Eleusis was the place of birth of the eternally recurring cosmic event, the place where the Kore was found, an event perceived as being the guarantee of the continuity of life. Such was the sorrow of Demeter, the divine mother, after the abduction of Persephone that the poet describes it right from the very beginning of the Homeric Hymn to .Demeter It seems that even in her joyful reunion with Persephone, she is marked by bitterness.

In the depths of the soul and mythical thought

Why Elefsina today: From melancholy to vision

NATURE LOVES TO CONCEAL HERSELF VISION

Vana Xenou was born in Athens in 1949, at a time when Greece was trying to overcome a critical socio-political period. She studied painting and stage design at the School of Fine Arts in Athens from 1968 to 1973. In 1973, she entered the École Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. She then pursued studies in painting and mosaics at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1974 to 1978. Today she holds the position of Emeritus Professor at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) School of Architecture (1980-2016). In 2008, she was nominated as the candidate for Greece for the Women of Europe Award, instituted by the International Association for the Promotion of Women of Europe. In 2014, she was bestowed the honor of Officer of the Order of the Academic Palms by the French Republic.

Solo Exhibitions

She has held numerous solo exhibitions with specific thematic approaches, including: Artistic exploration in the world of Lewis Caroll (Athens, Greece, 1982), D’après Judith et Holopherne de Artémisia Gentileschi (Athens, Greece, 1983), D’après Lucrèce de Lucas Cranach (Athens, Greece, 1985), Quotations (New York, USA, 1986), Angels, Earth and Heaven (Athens, Greece, 1989), D’après l’Odalisque de Paul Outerbridge (Patra, Greece, 1992), Eleusinian mysteries (Patra, Greece, 1992), Eleusinian mysteries II (House of Cyprus, Athens, Greece, 1995), Hyperion or the Hermit in Greece (Athens and Thessaloniki, Greece, 1998), Eleusinian mysteries III (Chapelle de la Salpêtrière, Paris, France, 2000), Éleusis-Perasma (Kronos Old Factory, Eleusis, Greece, under the auspices of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and the Municipality of Eleusis, 2004), Psychagogia (Greece, 2005), Arrivée-Passage (Jardins du Palais Royal, Paris, France, with the support of the French Ministry of Culture and Communications, 2007–2008), The Soul of the Place (National Gardens, Athens, Greece, 2010), Passage. With your eyes cast heavenwards (Permanent Sculptural Installation, commissioned by Piraeus Bank Cultural Institution, Athens, Greece, 2012), Les sens politique des lieux sacrés. Athens –Eleusis – Delphi (Fonds culturel de l’Ermitage, Paris, Garches, France, 2017), and For Her (Athens, Greece, 2022).

Group Exhibitions (Selection)

Vana Xenou has participated in numerous group exhibitions both in Greece and abroad. Her work has been showcased in private and public institutions internationally, including ICC (Belgium), Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art (Greece), Benaki Museum (Greece), Gallery of Dimitrios

Pierides (Greece), National Museum of Women in the Arts (USA), National Gallery (Greece), Mitchell Museum (USA), Trammel Crow Centre (USA), Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (Germany), European Cultural Foundation (Spain), Hjorring Museum (Denmark), Museum of the Ephebe (France), European Parliament (Belgium), Antikenmuseum Basel und Sammlung Ludwig (Switzerland), Municipal Gallery of Athens (Greece), Vianden Castle (Luxembourg), Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation (Greece), Hellenic Foundation for Culture (Germany), Place Bellevue (France), European Cultural Centre of Delphi (Greece), Museum of Dalarna (Sweden), Chapelle de la Sorbonne (France), Averoff Museum (Greece), National Museum of Contemporary Art (Greece), Byzantine and Christian Museum (Greece).

Published Books

Her published books include Selections from the Notebooks of Vana Xenou (1986), Vana Xenou (with texts by Claude Mollard, 1995), Angels, Earth and Heaven (1989), Hyperion or the Hermit in Greece (with texts by Thanasis Moutsopoulos, 1998), Mystères d’Éleusis (with texts by Jean-Marie Tasset, 2000), Eleusis-Perasma (with texts by Helen Ladia, 2004), Arrivée-Passage (with texts by Christine Buci-Glucksmann, 2008), and The Soul of the Place (with texts by Emmanuel Daydé and Ariadni Vozani, and a Dialogue with Vana Xenou, directed by Katerina Koskina, 2010). Additionally, her text “Pourquoi Éleusis aujourd’ hui? De la mélancolie à la vision” and a significant part of her work related to the Eleusinian Mysteries were included in the 75th volume of the Eranos Yearbook titled Life, Individual, Community, and the Thought of the Absolute: Unsurpassable Passions (2019-2020-2021).

Numerous texts have been published about Vana Xenou’s work, including catalogues of solo and group exhibitions, articles, books, academic essays, interviews in magazines and newspapers (such as Claude Mollard & Martine Boulart. Vana Xenou: Ces cités où passent encore les dieux. Paris: Beaux Arts Editions (Hors-série). 2017), and numerous references on the internet.

From the History to the Future of Eleusis

Soultana (Nana) Spyropoulou CEO 2023 Eleusis European Capital of Culture

Mystery 15 The Living Museum is the last major event of the official artistic program of 2023 Eleusis European Capital of Culture, as it was designed for the year of the title. The presentation of this event is of particular significance, as it marks the completion of a cycle, that of this large endeavour called the “artistic program,” which began a decade ago, as this specific project is already included in the early versions of the EcOC bid book. Furthermore, it symbolizes the commitment of the 2023 Eleusis to a longterm vision for the city of Eleusis, based on the power of art as a lever for shaping the future.

It is a complex undertaking, which highlights the most important and internationally renowned aspects of Eleusis’ past through visual art and original research. At the same time, by incorporating research approaches and design proposals for public space, it bridges these aspects with the potential future of the city. It connects Eleusis with its European past and opens a new chapter for the next day.

Additionally, with the parallel presentation in two spaces — the former Iris factory and the archaeological site of Eleusis — two symbolic spaces representing the two most significant periods of the city’s cultural heritage, from the largest sanctuary of the ancient world to the industrial center of the modern Greek state, as

well as two spaces of great importance for the Eleusis 2023 program, a vibrant field of dialogue is created between history, memory, and the contemporary identity of the city. Thus, it stands at the heart of the effort and the meaning of the institution of the European Capital of Culture.

The significance of the work is further enhanced due to the deep and long-standing relationship of the artist, Vana Xenou, with the city. Through decades of artistic and research activity, Vana Xenou has become as closely associated with Eleusis as no other visual artist. She has served as a modern ambassador of the Eleusinian Mysteries in Greece and abroad. Part of her work for Eleusis has been presented in historical exhibitions, such as the one at the Kronos factory in 2004, as part of the Aeschylia Festival — one of the first actions that actively contributed to the modern cultural identity of the city — as well as in iconic spaces, such as the Chapelle Saint-Louis de la Salpêtrière in Parisand the National Garden in Athens, confirming the cultural value and international scope of the program.

It is therefore an honor for us to present Mystery 15 The Living Museum, a work as multifaceted as the city of Eleusis itself — a city we have followed for so many years as it changes its face, and we wish for it to continue doing so.

Σελίδα 2/Page 2

(2009-2012),

Passage (2009-2012), Sculptural installation

Bronze & stainless steel, 57.70 x 11.80 x 6.70 m

Σελίδα 4/Page 4

Περσεφόνη (2000-2004),

555 x 56 x 83

Persephone (2000-2004), Βronze sculpture, 555 x 56 x 83 cm

Σελίδα 6/Page 6

(2000-2007), 14

Tραπέζι 660 x 110 x 60 εκ.

50 x 70 x 40

Eleusis 2000-2007, 14 sculptures made of plaster, 50 x 70 x 40 cm. Table, 660 x 110 x 60 cm.

9/Page 9

Watercolor,

10/Page 10

«Pourquoi Eleusis aujourd’hui».

Fabio Merlini & Riccardo Bernardini [Επιμ.]. Eranos Yearbook 75/2019–2020–2021: Life, Individual, Community, and the Thought of the Absolute: Unsurpassable Passions. (Πρακτικά 2019, 2020, και 2021 Συνέδρια Eranos,

Eranos-Jung,

Eranos). Ascona: Eranos Foundation & Daimon Verlag. 2023. σ. 139.

186.

Bidez

Catalogue des manuscrits alchimiques.

Vana Xenou and

the

Eleusinian Mysteries Takis Mavrotas Director

of the Fine Arts Programme of the V. & M. Theocharákis Foundation

On a rainy afternoon in Eleusis1 before night spread its deep darkness, one might think that, having just left Demeter and Persephone, Vana Xenou met Actaeon, the incarnation of an eternal search for beauty. The two began an unending conversation about ideal concepts and intelligible forms, conceivable only by those who passionately search for them. This unexpected encounter of theirs reflects on Vana Xenou’s anxiousness to penetrate into the essence of art, the individual, the infinite universe. One may ask, why I imagined her together with Actaeon and not the goddess of wisdom and logic, Athena. It is for the sculptress’s cosmogenic reflection on myths.

The divine radiance of beauty haunts Vana Xenou’s work, as her sculptures reflect on her inner insight – her intuition -, the constant battle between the senses and the intellect that conjoins matter and form, knowledge and ideas, earth and sky. Thus, in Elefsina, a sacred city with ancient history and Mysteries, the artist presents her own sculptural and pictorial universe of monumental works. It is the destination of the great procession from Athens, bearing the sacred symbols of the cult of Demeter, the goddess of fertility and inwardness, but also the wrathful and unconsolable mother that leads us along the Sacred Way.

Demeter «Thesmophóros» (law-giving), «Thesmothétis» (lawgiver), «Eurynóme» (she of the broad pastures) is a teacher of all things, of this immeasurable continuity of life: a mother’s eternal tenderness; a daughter’s infinite affection; a child’s innocence. It is Vana Xenou’s profound desire to penetrate the mystery and

the enigma, the past and the present. Detached from anything ephemeral and meaningless, she is fervently committed to continuous creation. In her own words:

I have been meaning for some time now to complete my thirty-year artistic work on the Eleusinian Mysteries, to formulate my experience and my thoughts on this great visionary, educational and initiatory method. This effort is based on an overall survey of my works, on the notes I gathered from mythological and anthropological enquiries, philosophical essays, historical references, archaeological studies. My personal contribution followed a long process of re-visiting the sources that refer to the Eleusinian Mysteries.2

Vana Xenou, restless in nature and spirit, achieves an unprecedented aesthetic proposal through emotions and contemplation. She approaches Ancient Greek sculpture with profound veneration and knowledge, bringing together in her structural work eternal principles and values, beyond any pictorial tradition. It is her own concern to express an emotional atmosphere, out of the very depths of matter, out of bronze, clay and marble; to reveal a truth of her own vision through the figurative wealth of elegance, sensitivity and passionate quests.

Beneath the veil hide the virtues of sculpture

Vana Xenou’s bronze figures, with their precise stereometry, carry the traces of pain and time on their faces. Whether placed on rectangular

bronze tables or on fourteen industrial iron columns, the studied setting of the sturdy forms of the Ancestors strengthens the mystery among them. One may think that their shadows link the present to the fear of the underworld, since we know neither the realm of Hades nor that of hell, and, another, that they link the harsh human reality to the inevitable fate of a finite life, of death. Thus, heaven remains the personal affair of each individual.

The overall view of Vana Xenou’s work reveals the existence of a philosophical stance, a constant action, since her personal experience of artistic expression is inscribed in the inextinguishable need for creation. What haunts her is the harmonious relationship of her sculptural world with its surroundings, the space of orderliness as she indicatively proposes with her designs of a Mythological Park at Elefsina in the wider area of the quarries. Through hundreds of drawings, studies, notes, observations and recordings, carefully shrouded by the mantle of her studio, space and time, past and present, become the starting point for thought and pictorial statements. Her creation consists, mainly, of a sequence of visions dedicated - by means of an uninterrupted evolution of her figure-shaping quests and a reflective reorganization of her media -, to complete an immense body of work entitled Eleusinian Mysteries. It is a coherent ensemble of artworks, whose trait remains their plastic completeness and their inner truth, which touches, troubles, liberates and relieves.

The sacred rhythm of sculpture

Vana Xenou is steeped in Greek senses, in the plastic rhythm of Alcamenes and Praxiteles. The widely-discussed presentations of her sculptural universe, with her own personal plastic idiom, from the National Gardens in Athens, to the Chapelle Saint-Louis de la Salpêtrière and the Palais Royal gardens in Paris, and, now, to the archaeological site of Eleusis and the old varnish and paint industry Iris, promote the purification of the soul. Her work affects

human consciousness as it is part of the human experience, and it appropriates public spaces. It is in this closed space that she incorporates her sculpture, expanding the collective experience and memory. It is an anthropocentric work, enhanced by the notion of mystery; a mystery without any emotional predisposition.

With Vana Xenou you feel that through her work she prompts reflection, provokes emotions and unites her fate with all those searching for another path to the future, with a greater emphasis on the search for universal human values, as it moves between the experiences of yesterday, of reality, of imagination, but also of the clash of passions. Her Gods descend from Olympus and constantly mingle and converse with mortals. Her painting, with its mysterious beauty and the images’ interiority, the expressive equilibrium, with the inexhaustible sculptural sequences, cements her aesthetic truth and reveals her interpretative ability. She paints with quick gestures, with the ultimate aim of achieving a universal harmony, with anatomical contrasts and unequal proportions. Vana Xenou’s sculpture, painting and countless drawings for the Eleusinian Mysteries achieve with the utmost expressive power, I believe, their alignment with the words and feelings of Giorgos Seferis:

[…]

and the country like a large plane-leaf swept along by the torrent of the sun with the ancient monuments and the contemporary sorrow.3

The worldview of Antiquity permeates her work, while the emphasis on the spiritual expression of her figures conveys an obvious dualism and her desire to conquer a new rhythm. At the same time, the grouped arrangement of her bronze sculptures, which are interconnected both in terms of shape and conceptually, constantly raises questions about their devotional or nondevotional nature. In her aesthetic essay on

Why Elefsina today? From melancholy to vision, Vana Xenou writes:

According to the surviving fragments, during the Eleusinian Mysteries the initiate must not learn; he must feel and enter a state of experiencing and being receptive (παθείν and διατεθείναι).

Michail Psellos, the Byzantine monk and philosopher, who had an excellent knowledge of the period’s extant writings about the mysteries, called the phenomenon to which this passive state leads “illumination” and “autopsy” hence seeing with one’s eyes.4 […]

The artist creates images in order to recapture the vision. In this manner, from being a direct sensation seeing becomes an action, which through the light connects seeing (ιδείν) with conceptualizing (νοείν). Art education sustains the reductive - revealing nature of seeing. Today, if we want to turn our thoughts in a direction worthy of the phenomenon of the initiatory process, we must rely on the latter’s reductiverevealing nature.5

During all the periods of its evolution, Vana Xenou’s work springs from her spirit and penetrates into matter, into the bronze and the paints, attempting to initiate us into the mystery of the world. From a young age, she acquired her own style, defining a consistent work method and her unmistakable stamp. Her art is esoteric and monumental, contemporary and classical, sensitive and modest, with many particularities that would be worth studying in depth in order to more fully appreciate her expressive values. And this direct dialogue with our past, that of Antiquity but also Byzantine through the Christian faith and the expectation of beatitude, reveals her constant probing, but also her enigmatic escapes into the mystery of myth and life.

1 Editors’ note: The word «Eleusis» designates the sacred city of Antiquity, and the word «Elefsina» the current city of Modernity. However, we reserve the ancient Greek words «Έλευσίς» and «ἔλευσις» for any reference linked to the Eleusinian Mysteries and the cult of Demeter.

2 XENOU Vana. «Pourquoi Eleusis aujourd’hui». In Fabio Merlini & Riccardo Bernardini [Eds.]. Eranos Yearbook 75/2019–2020–2021: Life, Individual, Community, and the Thought of the Absolute: Unsurpassable Passions. (Proceedings 2019, 2020, and 2021 Eranos Conferences, Eranos-Jung Lectures, and Eranos School Seminaries). Ascona: Eranos Foundation & Daimon Verlag. 2023. p. 139.

3 SEFERIS George. «The King of Asini». In Edmund Keeley & Philip Sherrard [Eds. & Trans.]. George Seferis: Collected Poems. New Jersey : Princeton University Press. 2024. p. 134.

4 XENOU (2023): 113. See also: Michel Psellos. «Περί Ιωάννου

In Joseph Bidez et al [Eds.]. Catalogue des manuscrits alchimiques. Bruxelles: Maurice Lamertin. IV, 17: «Αυτού παθόντος

Ibid: 114.

Eleusis (2000-2007), Detail, Installation, Twenty-six bronze sculptures, 55 x 60 x 21 cm, 84 x 70 x 30 cm, 90 x 74 x 30 cm. Table and walls made of black sheet metal, 1260 x 120 x 60 cm, 300 x 280 cm.

sculptures,

and walls made of black sheet metal,

1 FREUD Sigmund. «A disturbance of memory on the Acropolis». Στο The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Τόμος XXII. Λονδίνο: The Hogarth Press. 1964. σσ. 340-341.

1979.

124:

3 ΞΕΝΟΥ Βάνα. «Pourquoi Eleusis aujourd’hui»

Στο Fabio Merlini & Riccardo Bernardini [Επιμ.]. Eranos Yearbook 75/2019–2020–2021: Life, Individual, Community, and the Thought of the Absolute: Unsurpassable Passions. (Πρακτικά 2019, 2020, και 2021 Συνέδρια Eranos, Ομιλίες Eranos-Jung, και Σεμινάρια Σχολής Eranos). Ascona: Eranos Foundation & Daimon Verlag. 2023. σ. 139.

4 HÉRACLITE. Fragments. Παρίσι: Presses universitaires de France. 1986. σ. 255.

5 GIDE André. Théâtre: Saul; le roi candaulle; Œdipe; Perséphone; le treizième arbre. Παρίσι: Gallimard. 1942. σ. 327.

6 HOMERE. Hymnes. Μετάφραση Jean Humbert. Παρίσι: Les Belles Lettres. 1976.

16/Page 16

Persephone, 1999

Watercolor on Marouflé paper, 840x450 cm Σελίδα 20/Page 20

Chambre Nuptiale, Watercolor chinese ink on marouflé paper, 400 x 150 cm, 1999

21/Page 21

(2000-2004),

22/Page 22

The Sacred Marriage of Heaven and Earth, Watercolor on marouflé paper 840x450 cm

Vana xenou at eleusis: hymn from the world’s first dawn

Emmanuel Daydé Art historian and curator

How, in Greece, do you carry the immense weight of an ancient past other than as a crushing burden preventing any true creation? How do you sing of the world’s present while returning to the depths of Ancient Greece’s origins? To Dadaist Francis Picabias’s witticism that “there is no Antiquity”, Vana Xenou responds: if that is so, it is because time past is time present. It is as proved by the great modern artists, Pablo Picasso, Constantin Brancusi or Le Corbusier. Sigmund Freud was the first to speak of a feeling of disquieting strangeness that gripped him when walking in the Athens ruins: “When, finally, on the afternoon after our arrival, I stood on the Acropolis and cast my eyes upon the landscape, a surprising thought suddenly entered my mind: so, all this does exist, just as we learned in school!1” According to this Freudian epiphany, Greek Antiquity is not a myth but the manifestation of a hidden reality. Is not the hierophany of Antiquity, this vision of the divine as a form of forms, similar to the Christian epiphany, a tangible manifestation of the divine? As for modern hierophany, wouldn’t it resemble James Joyce’s epiphany, this spiritual manifestation that suddenly appears in the midst of a speech, in a sentence of no great importance or even in the most mundane of gestures – that is to say in the daily routine of life itself?

Even though in Phaedrus, Plato refers to the Mysteries, he did not dedicate any dialogue at Eleusis. Inspired by the platonic dialogues, it is Vana Xenou who did it, not with words, but with deeds. That is to say with paintings and sculptures, the forms given to thought. In

Greek, the word “mystery” means to close and, although we know little about the Eleusinian Mysteries’ secret, we do know that the initiation began by entering one’s own darkness by closing one’s eyes and mouth. Without doubt Vana Xenou faces the challenge of making visible what cannot be seen. Her sculpture is like a sculpture for the blind destined for the use of those who can see. If we are to believe the historian of religions Carl Kerenyi, in Ancient Greek religion there is no serious intention to keep secrets. At Eleusis, the secret was held on to not to hide something, but to protect: from the moment it was revealed, it ceased to exist, creating a space conducive to a particular visual and auditory sensation, mediated by acts, gestures, silence and voices.

But if secrecy is the particular form of the ineffable, how do we express this unspeakable in acts, gestures and silences? Vana Xenou replies: by letting ourselves fall into the darkness. By blinding ourselves to better see. Like Antigone guiding the blind Oedipus, her paintings and sculptures form a long procession of images, like those of Antiquity’s Greater Mysteries, celebrated before autumn, in September. Initiation, Orientation, Passage,Axis Mundi, Eros and Thanatos connected by the same stem, Demeter and Kore, Persephone and the young shoot called “Koros” emerging from a seed above a body of water, all these symbolic and accidental figures found by Vana Xenou in the secrecy of her studio become hiera, sacred objects exhibited in the dazzling light. “We like to think that an object we don’t understand cannot

help us in any way”, said psychoanalyst Carl Jung. “But that’s not always the case.” Especially since, as an archaeologist of memory, the artist’s movements become, today, an architecture of desire cast in cement, “So, like a child after its mother, I flutter2”, as the poet Sappho said.

When Heraclitus was claiming in one of his aphorisms that “nature loves to hide”, was he referring to Eleusis and its mysteries3? After all, it is said that he had been initiated, before Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. According to the philosopher, the difficulty of revealing the nature of a thing indicates the necessary distinction one needs to make between exterior appearance and the reality behind the appearance. Only disappearance allows appearance. I would like to quote the Beat poet Brion Gysin speaking of sculptor Takis’ Magnetic Fields: “Why am I here? I’m here to disappear. Being is my here which is there. I do not think. I am thought. I am thought in action. My thought is an action and I disappear. I have disappeared. I am no longer there.”

Vana Xenou’s magnetic fields could well be the fields of living death. “Men wish to live, but even more so they desire to die4”, says Heraclitus, “they procreate so that other destinies of death may be born”. In a similar spirit, Jannis Kounellis alarm’s us that in the 20th century, “the dead no longer exist, and that is grave”. He asks: “how can I survive without drama, without tradition, how can I imagine that the journey is over?” And, he follows up to add: “history has been kind, it has engraved in my mouth the beginning of an ancient breath”. It is this natural, simple and modest ancient breath that Vana Xenou takes up in turn, a kind of Greek version of the Italian Arte Povera, an exaltation of a new Archaic Art made of bronze, cement, cut branches, water and obscure and prophetic stones.

It is in rituals and mysteries that Vana Xenou finds an inspiration and a method, which consists of hiding and obscuring, all the better to reveal and illuminate. Hymns from the world’s first dawn, as André Gide said in his Perséphone, recalling

the Lesser Mysteries at Eleusis when the goddess was venerated in the spring in Attica.

If spring is to be reborn, The seed must consent to die Uunderground, so that it may reappear As a golden harvest in years to come.5

Far from touristic odysseys, Vana Xenou’s inner journey is not an attempt to reconstitute the absence of old, but to be initiated into what exists regardless of this loss, to mold the past into the present. We may faithfully refer to the verses of the Homeric hymn to Demeter: “Blessed is he among earthbound mortals who has seen these things6” (480). Let us pray, then, to God and Demeter.

1 FREUD Sigmund. «A disturbance of memory on the Acropolis». In The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Volume XXII. London: The Hogarth Press. 1964. pp. 340-341.

2 SAPHO. The Poems οf Sappho. Historical & Critical Notes Translations, and a Bibliography by Edwin Marion Cox London: Williams and Norgate ; New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1924. Fragment 36 : « ς δ

3 XENOU Vana. «Pourquoi Eleusis aujourd’hui». In Fabio Merlini & Riccardo Bernardini [Eds.]. Eranos Yearbook 75/2019–2020–2021: Life, Individual, Community, and the Thought of the Absolute: Unsurpassable Passions. (Proceedings 2019, 2020, and 2021 Eranos Conferences, Eranos-Jung Conferences, and Eranos School Seminars). Ascona: Eranos Foundation & Daimon Verlag. 2023. p. 139.

4 HÉRACLITE. Fragments. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. 1986. p. 255.

5 GIDE André. Théâtre: Saul; le roi candaulle; Œdipe; Perséphone; le treizième arbre. Paris: Gallimard. 1942. p. 327.

6 HOMERE. Hymnes. Translation Jean Humbert. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. 1976.

2/Page2

View of an Open-Air Theatre Proposal in the Vlycha Area, by Vana Xenοu

3/Page 3

Preliminary Design for the Redevelopment of the Area of Vlycha- by Vana Xenou

7/Page 7

Elefsina in three acts

The question of “why Elefsina today?”, an integral part of the complex project being discussed here, is both timely and timeless, much like the work of Vana Xenou. There is absolutely no doubt that this work is quintessentially visual, without one being able to distinguish clearly between its pictorial and sculptural dimensions, yet it is equally theoretical and, indeed, in a way that permeates matter with a mysterious yet simultaneous invocation of the past and the future, an ontological if not a philosophical perception. Having observed the work of Vana Xenou for many years, in particular the portion concerning the Eleusinian Mysteries, but also her contribution to the teaching and practice of architecture, of which I am a de facto participant, I discern in the overall project being presented to us in the context of Capital of Culture a threefold construction. In the middle, I place the purely artistic work, the sculptures and paintings, exhibited in the Archaeological Site of Elefsina and in the Iris Factory. Already, this double dimension, from the archaeological to the industrial, from the most ancient to the almost contemporary, and the trajectory joining them give the whole a meaning that has an urbanistic, historical and architectural nature. This placement, in the middle, goes hand in hand with a previous and a subsequent, a before and an after which apparently succeed one another, but which in fact constitute and reflect a constant transition, a perpetual passage, from the Archive and the Museum to the City.

In the beginning, then, the Archive. It could refer to Derrida’s concept of archive, with the term “Arkheion” designating both “the commencement and the commandment. […] the principle according to nature or history, there where things commence -physical, historical, or ontological principle- but also the principle according to the law, there where men and gods command1”. Wandering through the exhibition in the Iris Factory, in the middle of the space, you will encounter the representations of a large Archive, with images, mappings and renderings, fragmentary traces

8, 10/Pages 8, 10

(2004-2007),

Passage (2004-2007), Installation, bronze sculpture, 180 x 90 cm. Octahedral wooden structure, 220 x 180 cm.

11/Page 11

(1992),

Telestirion (1992), Chinese ink on paper

of a fragile memory, which is completed with written representations, inscriptions, inventories and other testimonies to reflection, which all together constitute a research work without which the artwork does not exist. A Mnemosyne, a remembrance that certainly refers to Aby Warburg, and more broadly to the Frankfurt School, at least to Walter Benjamin, but not only to these. Because Vana Xenou belongs to those artists who construct their artistic creation by means of a constant reflection about the creations of the past, as Claude Mollard wrote. You cannot understand this work without Eugène Delacroix or Lucas Cranach, Yannoulis Chalepas or Gustave Courbet, and in the same manner, here in Elefsina, without Carl Kerényi, every possible book or article about Demeter and Persephone, the archaeological research concerning the Sanctuary of Eleusis, the Sacred Way, the Lesser and Greater Propylaea, the Telesterion, the Kallichoron Well, but also the relationship with Athens, without which there is no Eleusis, the drawings and narratives of the Enlightenment travelers and of other explorers and architects, ground plans, elevations, maps. And not only that, the mystical and ancient past, but equally the contemporary, modern past, the planning and establishment of a new post-Independence town beside the old one, its industrial explosion, as unbridled as it was damaging and life-giving, which continues amidst the ruinous deindustrialization, beside the port and the sea front, turning Elefsina into a supreme stratification and a never-ending palimpsest in the Attic land. The place Elefsina, where “life begins again and again2”, the “idea of the eternal return3”, as she herself writes, the place where “the distant past of the Eleusinian myths4” meets “the modern history of the place5,” defining “the essence of truth as non-forgetting6” as described in the Greek words «a-lētheia» (truth) and «lēthē» (oblivion). Demeter and the Kore, the constant passage through Hades and the constant transition to fertility, the initiation and the epopteia (Contemplation) highlight Eleusis as an arrival, as a rearrival, as the

beginning that birth signifies, coming into the light (with eyes tight shut), as the field of creation par excellence, as Elefsina (and that is why we are here).

The figures, painted and sculpted, Persephone, Eleusis (Arrival), Gaia - Emersion The Ancestors, Passage have no meaning without the Archive, but they also have no meaning without the city, The Living Museum, the projection on the wounded natural and manmade landscape. This is the third part I shall refer to, as I said initially, the projection of what is exhibited on the other side of the Archive, in the space between the Iris Factory, the archaeological site and the industrial ruin, since giving meaning to the historical, mythological, physical and social parameters constitute Elefsina today as a layering of space and time.

In this sketching out quest, the perpetual passage, the urban relationship of initiation, rite and supervision as a wandering, a development of Walter Benjamin’s ideas, adds luminous and incorporeal, material and incised, made of point, linear or planar interventions to the monuments - ruins and the urban environment that chart, as if sowing grains, the constant return of Elefsina, the coexistence of cultural heritage with the historical present and the anticipated future.

It is in this context that the passage from melancholy to vision functions, the answer to the question of “why Elefsina today?” becoming Elefsina-Tomorrow. The plotted potential network connecting and highlighting focal points, with wandering routes and areas of interest, with luminous columns like shafts leading to the sky and arrays of lights connecting spatial installations to wall inscriptions and indications, that attempt to reinvent the ties between industry and antiquity, between the living contemporary town and the wounded landscape of post-industrial dereliction. None of this is there yet, in Elefsina as a town, but it is here, as Eleusis, midspace in the exhibition area: it is a sketch, a plan. And this plan culminates in Vlycha, in the wide quarried area of the large natural rock that

page

Proposal for the Redevelopment of the Area of Vlycha- Plan view, by Dorette

15/Page 15

(2000-2007),

(Arrival) (2000-2007), Installation,

became the cement for building Athens, the heavily scarred landscape of a cosmic battle of Titans, with manmade traits. In this disquieting rocky landscape, with the angular and sharpcrested relief of a natural ruin, Vana Xenou conjures up a gentle linear carving like the memory of a Telesterion, at the crossroads of land art and landscape revival, which aspires to transform Vlycha from a dead landscape into a reborn geophysical relief of the town, into a new landmark, with an open-air, stone theatre, like a womb between two emblematic masses that take on the form of enormous sculptures. Through paths, plantings and other structures, the mystical and the archaeological penetrate into the inhabited and the industrial to meet this new nature as an urban and visual event of an upgraded environment, as a public cultural park and a reborn Elefsina.

This major interwoven intervention completes the synchronicity of the works exhibited at the Iris factory and the archaeological site with the idea of the town of Elefsina as a living museum and a timeless urban sanctuary. Loss returns as creation. Vana Xenou’s artistic and urban sculptures process material and immaterial symbolisms that construct the ineffable, giving philosophical overtones to earth, stone, metal. Connecting the archive with the town, art bridges the loss and melancholy with the attainable vision brought about by constant rebirth. This is, perhaps, why Vana Xenou’s multifaceted exhibition at Eleusis Capital of Culture is far more than a simple renewal of her successive exhibitions, over more than thirty years, around the Eleusinian Mysteries; it is also a fulfilment, a concurrence of melancholy and vision in the Eleusinian earth, where modernity becomes antiquity, which is then reborn.

Panayotis Tournikiotis

Emeritus Professor, National Technical University of Athens

1 DERRIDA Jacques. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press. 1998. p. 1.

2 Vana Xenou: The Soul of The Place. Athens. National Gardens (under the auspices of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Organization: City of Athens, City of Athens Cultural Organization, Board of trustees of the National Gardens. Collaboration: State Museum of Contemporary Art – G Costakis Collection). June 1 –26 September 2010 (Katerina Koskina. Athens: SMCA Vana Xenou. 2010). p. 23.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid: 20.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid.

Concept — Artistic Project

Vana Xenou

Exhibition Curation

Takis Mavrotas, Emmanuel Daydé

Architectural Design — Museographic Study

Dorette Panagiotopoulou

Architectural Design Consultant — Project Supervision

Alexandros Panayotopoulos

Project Curation Management

Georgia Voudouri

Head of Research and Archival Development

Yannis Tournikiotis

Technical Consultant

Phaedon Karidakis

Project Coordination

Theodora Bassacou

Art Project Organization Associate

George Bekirakis

Architectural Design Associates

Antonis Touloumis, Katerina Michalopoulou

Assistant Architectural Student

Ioanna Delivelioti

Assistance in visualization & Renderings

Giorgos retsos

Communication Consultant

Angela Tsiftsi

Lighting Design

Maria Maneta

Construction Consultant

Manos Vordonarakis

Technical Support

Kostas Giannakis

Technical Support Assistant

Vassilis Baras

Special Constructions

Thanasis Thalassinos

Artwork Transportation & Installation

Swift Art Services

Electrician — Lighting Technician

Stefanos Papathanassiou

Production Execution

VDTA ΙΚΕ

Organized by 2023 Eleusis European Capital of Culture

The works“The Mnemosyne ofthe Streets”by Dimitris Pantazis and“Eleusis,Exploring the Boundaries Between theArchaeological Site and the Contemporary City”by Spyros Giotakis have been used.

Catalogue Editing

Vana Xenou

Catalogue Coordination

Theodora Bassacou

George Bekirakis

Texts

Takis Mavrotas

Emmanuel Daydé

Panayotis Tournikiotis

Vana Xenou

Yannis Tournikiotis

Text Editing

Yannis Tournikiotis

Creative Director

Nikos Georgopoulos

Design & Art Direction

Marlon Tate

Translations

Marianna Georgopoulou

Photo & Drawing Credits:

Alexandre Tabaste

Hector Dimisianos

Boris Kirpotin

Giorgos Triantafyllou

Stelios Tsikas

Dorette Panagiotopoulou

Vana Xenou

Printing

Pletsas - Kardari Printing House

Printed in Greece

A publication by 2023 Eleusis European Capital of Culture. The intellectual property rights of the catalog and its individual photographs and works belong to their respective creators.

Acknowledgments

We extend our sincere gratitude to: Professor Nikolaos Stampolidis, General Director of the Acropolis Museum; Christina Merkouri, Ephorate of Antiquities of West Attica; Efstathia Anesti, Archaeologist at the Ephorate of Antiquities of West Attica; Aliki Tsirgialou, Head of Photographic Archives of the Benaki Museum; Christos Laleos, Director of Topographic Applications at the Ministry of Environment and Energy; Heraklis Papaioannou and Aneta Tsouka from MOMus – Thessaloniki Museum of Photography; Ioanna Ninou, Archaeologist at the Archaeological Society at Athens; the Directorate of Greenery of the Municipality of Athens; Angeliki Saplaoura ERT - Archives Director; Yiorgis Yerolymbos Leonidas Embirikos; Stavros Petsopoulos Agra Editions; Irene Tseti; Ioulia Tseti; Margarita Pournara and Georgia Voudouri.

2023 ELEUSIS EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE EXECUTIVES

Chair Nikolaos Villiotis

Vice Chair

Evangelos Lingos

Member & CEO

Soultana (Nana) Spyropoulou

Member & Secretary Dimitrios Papagiannaros

Members

Georgios Liontos, Spiridon Mavrodimitrakis, Kyriakoula (Koula) Paradeisi, Dimitra Pipili, Grigorios Sampanis, Charalampos Tsafaras, Niki (Monika) Tsiliberdi

Secretariat of the BoD, Legal Adviser & Data Protection Officer (DPO) Eleni Rozi

2025 CORE TEAM

CEO, CEO SUPPORT, PROJECT COORDINATION & RECOVERY FUND

CEO Soultana (Nana) Spyropoulou

Director of CEO Support, Project Coordination

Eleni Tzounopoulou

Director of the Recovery Fund Project Implementation Ioulia Kolovou

Head of CEO Support, Project Coordination Eleni Biniori

Head Central Secretariat Theodora Soufli

ΑSSOCIATES OF CEO SUPPORT, PROJECT COORDINATION & RECOVERY FUND

Legal Adviser (Intellectual Property) Ioannis Paramythiotis

Legal Adviser (Administrative Associate)

Ioannis Nerantzis

Civil Engineering Technical Associate Panagiotis Paris Charlaftis

ARTISTIC DIRECTORATE, PRODUCTION & HOSPITALITY, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY & LEGACY

Head of Production & Hospitality

Maria Paouri

Head of Cultural Training Isavella Dimitra Karouti

Head of Performing Arts

Georgia Pasparaki

Head of Intellectual Property & Legacy Anastasia Amanatidou

ASSOCIATES OF ARTISTIC DIRECTORATE, PRODUCTION & HOSPITALITY, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY & LEGACY

Associate Coordinator of the General Artistic Directorate Zoi Drakopoulou

Archiving Support Staff Zoe Koukoutianou, Lito Athanasopoulou

Production Consultant Aspasia Peppa

Production Support Ioannis Dimitriou

Execution of Artistic Projects Support & Monitoring

Georgios Konstantinou, Panagiotis Ntovas

PREMISES, INFRASTRUCTURE & VENUES MANAGEMENT DEPARTMENT

Director of Premises & Infrastructure Chrysoula Martini

Head of Venues Management Anna Vafiadou

PREMISES, INFRASTRUCTURE & VENUES MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES

Premises & Infrastructure Department

Administrative Support Ioanna Maxakouli

Health & Safety Specialist

Ζacharias Grammatopoulos

Venues Supervisor

Ioannis Tsiatsianis

COMMUNICATIONS & PUBLIC RELATIONS DEPARTMENT

Director of Communications & Public Relations

Maria Papakonstantinou

Head of Communications & International Relations acting as Director of Communications & Marketing

Ejona Aggeliki Nikolari

Head of Tourism Development of Elefsina Ioannis Koukmas

COMMUNICATIONS & PUBLIC RELATIONS ASSOCIATES

Strategy & Creative Communications Consultant

Eleni Zisimopoulou

Head of Press Office

Ilektra Zargani

Copywriter Vasiliki Sakarelou

Social Media Manager Pinelopi Chrysanthou

FINANCE & ADMINISTRATION DEPARTMENT

Director of Finance & Administration Panagiotis Kanakis

Head of Accounting & Deliverables Monitoring Nikolia Patapi

Head of Human Resources Nefeli Maria Mademli

Head of Public Contracts, Tenders & Transparency Marios Efthymiou

FINANCE & ADMINISTRATION ASSOCIATES

Accounting Department Support Dimitrios Tsellos

Transport Services for People & Goods Dimitrios Triantis

Accounting – Tax Consultant Panagiotis Kontakos

Public Contracts, Tenders & Transparency Consultant Efstathios Efthymiou

Solo Exhibitions

Group Exhibitions (Selection)

Published Books