ART ISLANDS: Hydra -Maria Tsagkari
Maria Tsagkari’s site specific installation, “Part Two/The expectation” takes place on the rocks of Hydra on the way to Mandraki with support from The HYam Association. The work has been designed with great respect to the island’s natural and artistic environment. Furthermore, the architectural and historical particularity of the island has been taken into consideration.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Maria’s Tsagkari Archive
Maria Tsagkari’s last project “The new Green” concerns the establishment of a company named The New Green, which is the first company worldwide to discover a formula that converts the green color found in nature into blue. The main reference of the project is the novel “Heinrich von Ofterdingen”, by the German philosopher and poet Novalis (Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg), which is about the myth of Heinrich, a medieval troubadour who leaves everything behind and goes in pursuit of a small blue flower and which mythically embodies the values of the ideal life and pure poetry. Novalis’ “blue flower”, became an emblem for the whole of German Romanticism. The “Part Two/The expectation”, is an a monument asymmetrically structured blue garden, comprised of 300 plants found in Hydra’s landscape. The little sculptures are constructed using two different materials. One of them is a environmentally friendly resin and the other is aluminum painted with electrostatic color The little sculptures are placed in crevices that already exist in the rocks, in order for the work to be easily removed by the artist at any time and without changing the initial state of the rock. The construction and maintenance study has been made by the artist, since she is also a conserver of art and antiquities. The HYam Association (HYdra for Artists of the Mediterranean) was created in 2014 by the journalist Pauline Simons to support the young contemporary artists (under the age of 36), in Mediterranean countries, as well as to realize artistic purposes through events in Paris and on the Greek island of Hydra. In 2014 HYam chose Greece and Cyprus for its first award program. Among 20 selected artists, the committee chose four final artists, and awarded the Greek visual artist, Maria Tsagkari as prize-winner.
Info: Hydra rocks, Mandraki road, Hydra Island, Duration: 2/7-11/9/16, http://hyam.fr
