GRACE

GRACE was a one shot residency program in the heart of Athens in which I took part in the summer of 2016. Welcomed in an abandoned hotel, the work was tightly enterlaced with the building itself, the materials I found in its numerous spaces, its architecture and thus its history. The sap of the life that lasts, 2016 I wanted to talk about time. About a passed time - passed here. I wanted to talk about the color and the substance of dust and dirt collected and absorbed by the fibers and surfaces of this building. The before we were here. The time that belongs to the others, to the walls, to the curtains. A time that ran parallel to the one I lived. Seeking in my personal remembrances unknown pictures that would be specific to this space, the here. An accumulation of objects -traces- of the multiple presences and realities unfolding in front of me while exploring the attic in search of materials that my body would recognize, and that my fingers would understand. This, in order to construct images that would grasp this space as much as they would grasp my personal spaces of the past.
Constructing shapes that are proper to both this building and myself.
Weave a domaine, some kind of metaphysical territory that belongs to us both.
A new story constructed through the deconstruction of old ones. A story that is not more than a brief encounter. A bed - island, central part of any habitat. Fundamental and archaic framework.
Most intimate and universal at the same time . A shape made for and by the body. Build without tools, only some wire and thread are keeping the thin lines together.
Four legs barely standing up. In our imagination strangely, this bed carried countless bodies. Bodies in need. Precarious existences - surviving rather than living. A bed, a blanket… and that most elementary habitat; a piece of clothing. As some sort of survival kit, ready to be used by yet another passer-by.