MIRAGES ΧV

August is the month of vacations, especially if you are living in Greece, in Mediterranean, in the South, where the dimensions of all the issues and problems are changing, the angles mitigating and the memory stretches over the horizon, the light of stars and the full moon. In Europe, in the North of Central Europe, that does not apply, although the rhythms of everyday life have changed, everyone is wondering and agonizing about the Greek Crisis, especially the artists, they are asking us continuously, what is the position of the Greek Artists(?)

I cannot answer them, I cannot and I do not want to take the responsibility for this, because as in the Photos of Dimitris Lempesis, life has two sides, if you reverse it, it is decoded differently. It is different here than there. It’s the relation between the Center with the District. When someone is in the Center, he is in the Eye of the Facts, he is in hot blood, when someone is in the District, has impersonality, and he is dispassionate but at the same, imagines more of what is happening or could be happen(!)

I understand now, that the generation of the ‘60s, if hadn’t left Greece, couldn’t have done, what had done, because they were in the Center not in the District. That’s why, we are not asking from the Greek artists who are in the Eye of the Facts, but not in the Center, to transfigure in artistic creation a reality that oppresses them. Or the crisis doesn’t oppresses them enough, to become unsustainable and to be transformed into powerful visual art like: Shirin Neshat, Mona Hatoum, Marina Abramovic and so many other artists in the past, the catalyst is the landscape, the family and life goes on(?)

I wonder without being aphoristic, after all of these, I come from the same cycle, just here I feel more mature and responsible, perhaps ultimately all who played a role over the years in the political and social developments our country, are the exiled of the dictatorship and these are the results(?) Maybe it isn’t an identical route but we’re going in circles(?) Did we are waiting from someone else to do the miracle or simply we are the miracle(?)

Good Month
Efi Michalarou
1/8/15

*The photo is part of a series, from the work in progress project: “Landscape Greece” by Dimitris Lempesis which composes the image of Greece that we all love and will continue to love, either if we live there or overseas…