ars in brevis
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Creating by candlelight
n a nutshell, the Dark Ages, which followed the decline of the Roman Empire, was a period defined by economic and social instability and mass migration. The definition could easily apply to today. Judging by recent world events, it is clear that the twenty-first century is not entirely stable. Rather than being carved in stone or marble, contemporary reality is one defined by online information databases that could disappear at the flick of a switch, where borders have become nothing more than a mere formality, and warfare is waged in the name of populations that might not have agreed to such action in the first place. In these troubled times humanity has taken a backseat, something that concerns artist Kalliopi Lemos. We meet at the New Benaki Museum, where her latest trilogy Navigating in the Dark commenced in January and will continue at Rethymno, Crete, from May 6 to August 27, culminating at the Crypt of St. Pancras Church in London, from October 1 to November 30. “There is no trust between people and no trust in the systems that define our societies; hence comes the idea that we are all navigating in the dark,” Lemos observes. “Darkness is the age we are going through; the loss of trust, the loss of confidence, and the loss of feeling. My suggestion is get inside yourself and find humility and understanding to understand the person opposite you.” Lemos is an artist firmly rooted in the narrative of human history. Her work is often described as investigations into spiritual and physical migrations. Having lived outside Greece for forty years with a base in London, she has a cultural affinity with Japan, where she was introduced to Ike-
Blade Boat
106 May/June 2011 I ODYSSEY
bana, Japanese flower arrangement, which she has studied for some fifteen years. With an international background, Lemos clearly connects to the world on a universal level that goes beyond nations and borders. “I feel that what I need to say about a subject sometimes needs to be expressed in different places of the world in order to give different viewpoints and different nuances,” she admits. Navigating in the Dark follows a previous trilogy from 2006 to 2009, that started in Eleusis, traveled to Istanbul, and ended in Berlin, a location as symbolic as the works exhibited. Focusing on the politics of forced migration, the sculptural installations in all three locations were made of boats Lemos had found washed up on the coast of her birthplace Chios since 2003 and which had been used by migrants crossing the sea from Turkey into Greece. The trilogy was a comment on a humanitarian crisis that remains an issue not fully acknowledged from the standpoint of the European Union despite the alarming statistic that ninety per cent of all detected illegal border crossings into the European Union come through Greece. As such, while the locations of Istanbul and Athens illustrated the problem, the choice of Berlin as the conclusion to this trilogy expressed a need to recognize immigration as a collective responsibility that might result in a viable solution. “The final sculpture was erected in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in order to acknowledge that there is also the rest of the world to think about,” Lemos says. “The immigration problem has escalated and
Boats full of secrets (2009)