Newsletter #17

Danae Stratou is participating in the contemporary art exhibition Eidyllia Odos in Technopolis City of Athens with the installation Upon the Earth Under the Clouds. The exhibition features works by 33 artists from Greece and abroad, and is based on an idea conceived and curated by Maria Marangou.

Upon the Earth Under the Clouds * is an outdoor installation using water and soil as its core materials and handmade ceramic pots as its dominant morphological feature. The installation was originally created for the Old Oil Mill and the city of Eleusis and comes into dialogue with the rich historical stratification of that place from antiquity to the long industrial history of the city and its structure today. Woven into its narrative are the myth of Demeter and Persephone, mortality, the notion of voyaging, the existential quest for a destination, and migration, as a repeated historical occurrence.

The current “migration” of the project in Gazi, in the area of ​​Kerameikos where it is installed in the form of a route, is of particular significance in the evolution of the project itself as in ancient times, the ritual journey via Iera Odos (the Holy Road) that ended in Eleusis, where the Eleusinian Mysteries took place, started exactly from this location in Keramikos. It is as if this latest version of the installation unites in a cyclical gesture the beginning and the end of the work at its essence.

Through this work, the artist seeks to connect the past with the present, using water as a central element. The moving water journeys and journeys us, traverses and unites places and cultures. It mirrors the vastness of space and alludes to the “infinite”, endless flow. It refers to the common elements that bridge conflicts and differences: to the agony and adventure of existence that is common to all people living “upon the earth and under the clouds.”

* The project was originally created in Eleusis in the context of the Aeschylia Festival 2017. Its title comes from a phrase said by the main character, in the documentary Agelastos Petra by Philippos Koutsaftis, Panagiotis Farmakis.

Upon the Earth Under the Clouds, Old Oil Mill, Elefsina, Greece 2017. Photo: Panos Kokkinias (copyright, Danae Stratou).