cosmic dust / new territories, 2025
Solo exhibition by Lea Petrou.

There are places where time folds, the landscape listens, and architecture breathes with memory. Founded in 1842, the National Observatory of Athens, perched with quiet gravity atop the Hill of the Nymphs, is the first scientific landmark institution of the Greek state. It stands as both witness and archive, where the heavens were first measured and the pulse of the Earth recorded. From this vantage point, Athens learnt to orient itself; its distances, its hours, its very presence in the world.

Cosmic Dust / New Territories emerges from this deep history, prompting us to navigate between realms of cosmic imagination and the tangible, Earth-bound materials that have long marked our understanding of the universe. In a site that holds both scientific legacy and contemporary enquiry, artist Lea Petrou presents a new body of site-specific work that goes beyond sole observation, offering a recalibration of how we engage with the cosmos. Her quest takes root in the legacy of Johann Friedrich Julius Schmidt (1825-84), the 19th-century German astronomer, geophysicist, and director of the Athens Observatory for nearly three decades. Through a personal ‘re-interpretation’ of Schmidt’s scientific endeavours, Petrou’s work inhabits a space—an incubator of rational and artistic merging, expanding our understanding of both the universe and all observations made for almost two centuries.

Schmidt, who methodically documented the Moon’s surface in his Chart of the Mountains of the Moon based on my own Observations in the Years 1840-1874 was not simply a man of mathematics; he was also a draftsman, whose work depicted celestial bodies as terrains of possibility. His investigations into comets, seismic shifts, and ancient civilisations integrated and harmonised empirical observation with the aesthetics of the unknown—a characteristic that Petrou acknowledges, but also disrupts, by asking us to view the materials of systematic enquiry with a renewed sensitivity. The Victorian era in which Schmidt worked was a time of profound intellectual upheaval, manifested by an insatiable desire to survey new territories, both celestial and terrestrial. The period marked an expansion of human knowledge through cataloguing and measuring, but also by reaching into fields previously uncharted such as the deep seas, the farthest planets, and even the invisible forces of the Earth itself. The works of Julius Vern also exemplify the spirit of adventure and discovery, reflecting the passion for pushing the boundaries of knowledge and uncovering the unfamiliar.

Petrou’s work builds on these explorations, not only to echo the experimental rigour of the past, but to masterfully recontextualise them through contemporary mediums and methods. She brings the earthly and the celestial together in a tactile dialogue that extends into the future, constructing new forms, new avenues for thought and contemplation.

Across the grounds of the Observatory, and within the interiors of its historical buildings, the artist places a series of works in cotton thread, wool, clay, marble and titanium. These materials are not trivial representations, but acts of interference, dislocation and reconstitution. Ceramic works, such as the large-scale relief map of Schmidt’s lunar topography, are fragmented and remade—each of the 25 sections of the map is recontextualised as sensory pieces; each one a moment in the Moon’s vast, shifting surface. Exposed to the elements, they interact with time and weather, like lunar rocks that have borne witness to eons of cosmic dust. These sculptural pieces are transformed into a living skin, quietly activating a dialogue with the sacred rocks of the Hill of the Nymphs.

Inside the historical Observatory rooms, Petrou presents smaller ceramic and embroidery works as well as a unique piece of jewellery, which revisualise Schmidt’s drawings and sketches as woven threads, fragmented encounters with his creations. The embroidered pieces become portals; the seemingly rigid lines of scientific monitoring soften into personal, intimate gestures of connection. Through this technique, the artist playfully and sometimes humorously migrates the focus from the calculation of distance to the closeness of analysis, a re-orientation from the cold precision of astronomy to the warmth of human touch.

A singular marble sculpture, placed along one of the shaded paths within the Observatory’s grounds, hints at the intersection of the organic and the astronomical. It evokes the ancient seagrass Posidonia australis, a plant whose roots stretch deep into the Mediterranean seabed, symbolising the unfathomable link between Earth and cosmos. Marble, traditionally a medium of monumental, static permanence, here becomes a forceful and vigorous form that speaks to the fragile, ever-changing relationship between humanity and the universe. This sculpture seems to breathe, a reminder that, even in the most solid of substances, there lies the potential for movement, for transformation, for the introduction of new conduits of prospect that feed our imagination.

The works on view are not just an homage to the scientific legacy of Schmidt; they are a personal re-envisioning of the boundaries between past, present, and future. All utilised materials resonate with the same energies that powered the first astronomers’ telescopes, yet they also point towards a future where the cosmos is no longer just an object of distant gazing, but one that we shape, with our technologies and dreams, into new potentials. Petrou’s work reverberates a contemporary engagement with space exploration: from the moon landings that Schmidt’s maps helped make possible to the robotic missions that now probe distant planets. The odyssey for knowledge continues to extend into unknown territories, both outward and inward.

Today, in an age dominated by emerging high-tech breakthroughs, telescopic devices, satellite data, and AI-driven simulations, the National Observatory of Athens remains a beacon, not only for its historical contribution to the academic community, but as a site for reflection on how we continue to decipher the universe. The very act of assessment has evolved; what once required careful manual calculation through the telescopes and instruments that adorn the Observatory’s buildings is now a process of digital analysis, robotic missions, and data-driven decision-making. The macrocosm has expanded, and so too have our methods of interacting with it.

Yet, despite these intelligent systems and advances, the core human impulse remains unchanged: the need to study, to know, to understand our place in the vastness of the cosmos. Petrou’s work is an open invitation to pause and reconsider the relationship between human touch and cosmic scale. The materials she employs bring the work of observation into physical space, focusing not just on what we see, but also on how we engage with and feel about what we cannot see, and perhaps never will.

This exhibition does not intend to offer us clear answers. It instead opens an expanse of possibility, a domain where the old and the new, the scientific and the personal can coexist, intermingle, and reframe one another. Here, in the very locus that saw the first measurements of time and the conception of the structure of existence, we are poised to chart new ways of thinking, novel modes of being, and fresh understandings of our place within the expanse of reality.

Curator and text: Kostas Prapoglou.

Scientific coordinator: Fiori-Anastasia Metallinou.

Graphic and book design: SCS KnowHow.

Location: National Observatory of Athens, Hill of the Nymphs, 118 10, Athens.