Journeys, 2020
Reclaimed found pine wood bed slats, acrylic glass, digital prints on paper, and India ink on cotton rag paper, tape, wood glue and screws

Visit of the Greek Ambassador to the Consulate, photograph by Zafeiris Haitidis

Occupy Project #1

Journeys, 2020

in Occupy Project #1 (New York), Consulate General of Greece in New York
organized by Eirni Linardaki

A series of drawings on paper and booklet cutouts are displayed in standing frames and presented on the table of the waiting room at the Consulate.
On the neoclassical side, drawings, improvised with pen, brush and India ink, imagine what could be the rest of fragments of Ancient Greek vases from the collections of the nearby Metropolitan Museum. The images are part of the Museum’s Open Access collection, a digital library under Creative Commons Zero (CC0), allowing anyone to copy, modify, distribute the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.
On the modernist side of the frames, are displayed booklet cutouts. They present images of Ancient Greek sculptures in the MET collections, and images from the National Archives of Naturalization Petitions of Greek citizens immigrating to the US in the 1930’s. Each booklet is individually cut by hand using a scalpel knife. These booklets, made for the show, are part of a larger project, started in February 2018 titled Surprise. Anyone can subscribe to Surprise and receive each month a new booklet cutout by mail.
The frames, made by the artist using reclaimed pine wood from bed slats he found on the streets of Brooklyn, are placed on paper inlay placemats made from the rest of the prints used for the drawings. The outlines of the fragments of vases on neutral gray backgrounds are inlaid together to create larger shapes for the frames to stand on.