the unknown island, 2024
A two-person exhibition.
“Dreaming of islands – whether with joy or in fear, it doesn’t matter – is dreaming of pulling away, of being already separate, far from any continent, of being lost and alone – or it is dreaming of starting from scratch, recreating, beginning anew”. Desert Island, Gilles Deleuze.
With the two-person exhibition, The Unknown Island, the artists Sophia Kyriakou and Lea Petrou invite the audience to an existential walk, an adventure inside and outside the boundaries of the exhibition space. Their inspiration and starting point is the short story of the Nobel Prize-winning Portuguese writer Jose Saramago, The Story of the Unknown Island, a tale about the restless human spirit, persistence, and the act of travel as a research for the self and the utopia, but also about how sometimes the belief in the existence of Utopia is more critical than its very existence:
A man and a woman risk leaving behind safety and venturing into the dark sea to discover themselves and experience the vertigo of a meaningful human relationship through a daring mission: the search for an Unknown Island, an island that does not exist on the map because it has not yet been discovered.
Departing from the idea of the Unknown Island as an archetypal symbol of the search for utopia in art and literature, the two artists create an idiosyncratic and sensitive dialogue on our stereotypical perceptions of travelling. On the one hand, they examine the expectations and longings caused by the (sea) voyage, and on the other hand, they highlight how our relationships with the world, nature, the ocean and the future are shaped through it. Their artistic research explores the postcolonial landscape, migration and political geography, proposes alternative approaches to the city and harbour, highlights ecological issues and traces gendered dynamics. Against the seamanship and the patriarchal lyricism of the patient, “Penelopean”, female handicraft, longing and fantasy implied by the embroidered handkerchiefs, the fragile ceramics and the stamps and postcards of Petrou stand the unexpected Arte-povera pieces of jewellery, collages and the trinket-islands made of microplastics through which Kyriakou expands the discussion towards contemporary consumeristic normalisation of the exploitation and destruction of our planet.
The journey of this multidimensional peripatetic exhibition starts from the ancient hydrosystems of the Metro Station “Dimotiko Theatro” of Piraeus and some poetic diary pages of Saramago. It is then directed to the impressive area of the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation and its rich Historical Library. There, the artists encourage us to browse through the old and rare books of the institution before reaching its naval collection, where their artistic path illuminates the tragic story of Lady Hamilton through her correspondence with Admiral Nelson while sparking a plethora of existential and historical associations around old maps, compasses, bone ships and several other fragments of this wondrous collection.
Saramago’s tender short story was written on the island of Lanzarote in 1997. Since then, the world has experienced successive odysseys of migration, pursuits of new paradises, and ecological, economic, health, and humanitarian crises; it has watched successive travellers perishing in dark seas and oceans, haunting places and consciences, and successive utopias collapsing.
With their very own reading of The Tale of the Unknown Island, Sophia Kyriakou and Lea Petrou activate new maps of desire and anticipation, inviting us to dream of islands, as Deleuze puts it, as a possibility. That is, meditating upon the changing world and its dreadful prospects and daring to envision new beginnings and atlases.
This unique trip will be accompanied by a catalogue that includes photographs of the works and the curatorial text by Gelly Gryntaki, a theoretical wandering text by Nikitas Siniosoglou, and unpublished material from Jose Saramago’s diaries translated by Athena Psyllia.
The exhibition takes place in the framework of Sea Week 2024 of the Μunicipality of Piraeus, with the noble support of STASY, Elliniko Metro, Saramago Foundation, Embassy of Portugal, Kastaniotis Εditions, Vorres Museum and the noble sponsorship of Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation, Metropolitan Hospital, Angelicoussis Foundation, Giampouras Collections Jewellery, Sovolos Catering and Kinsterna Hotel.
Two-person exhibition “The Unknown Island”
Artists, organising: Sophia Kyriakou and Lea Petrou
Curation: Gelly Gryntaki
Exhibition logo, poster and book design by: SCS KnowHow
The printed book includes texts by: Gelly Gryntaki and Nikitas Siniosoglou
Locations: The Historical Library of the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation, 2as Merarchias 36 & Aktis Moutsopoulou, Piraeus 185 35 and Metro Station “Dimotiko Theatro”, ticket office level.
“Similar threads of connection between the present and past are investigated through her embroidered handkerchiefs, postcards and stamps by the artist Lea Petrou. Her axis here is shaped by the mythical and the traditional, as we find them in Homer or Greek tradition: in the normative narratives that revolve around the waiting woman, the woman who first waves the handkerchief and then patiently expects her sailor husband to return, while embroidering, weaving or knitting. Travel, just like urban strolling, has always been around man. The male exclusiveness in the initiative and leadership of a sea adventure is a stereotype still unbreakable. Through the maps and escape points revealed in Petrou’s works, the female desire to travel is re-created and visualised, causing cracks in systemic, normative patterns.
This quality of the cracking, the fragility of literary myth’s dominant narratives, is also found in her delicate ceramics that are diffused in the exhibition space, reconstructing and revising gender stereotypes around professions and occupations such as sewing, cartography, pottery or shipping, suggesting to the public a widening of the gaze from the Homeric Penelope to Lady Hamilton, Admiral Nelson’s “disgraced” mistress, a woman whose life and reputation were trapped and distorted in Georgian England’s rigid social principles. The lady, whom both artists frame empathetically with their work, was not only the admiral’s patient Penelope, but also his advisor and support in difficult decisions. However, after his death, she was denounced by British upper-class society as the cause of dishonouring a prominent member.
Such ghosts of order and civility, as well as the idea of utopia, stir through Petrou’s terrariums, which leave a bitter aftertaste of an orderly canned nature. At the same time, the confrontation between her fragile ceramic universe and the insoluble, non-biodegradable, eternal microplastics of Kyriakou violates the established dualistic view of our world: the positive and the negative, the good and the evil”. Part of the curatorial text by Gelly Gryntaki. To read the full curatorial text follow the link.
Documentation of the exhibition [main entrance of the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation, terrariums, ceramic archival map of Piraeus].
Documentation of the exhibition [Lady Hamilton’s titanium pendant with archival map of Piraeus on natural sea shell, ceramic unknown islands, series of embroidered archival maps of Piraeus on cotton handkerchiefs].
Documentation of the exhibition [terrariums on ceramic unknown islands, ceramic boat chain model, embroidered Aphrodite archival stamp].
Documentation of the exhibition [ceramic archival map of Piraeus].
Documentation of the exhibition [ceramic archival bird stamps, ceramic embroidered Nelson’s flag signal on a cotton handkerchief, ceramic flowered islands, terrariums]
Documentation of the exhibition installation [ceramic boat chain, ceramic archival maps of Piraeus, ceramic unknown islands]
Documentation of the exhibition installation at the Metro Station “Dimotiko Theatro” ticket office level, including unpublished material from Jose Saramago’s diaries translated by Athena Psyllia.