Lefteris Tapas "The day begins at night"

@ltapas

@__i_____d

22. 05. 2021

After the several pandemic lockdowns, the opening exhibition of Lefteris Tapas at NIMAC's beautiful space appeared as a breather in my monotonous and isolated postpartum routine.

On entering the exhibition, my first impression was of the artworks being thoughtfully and specifically placed to create an atmosphere of ancient symbolism;innate imprints in our collective unconscious. The creative representations of the moon, sea waves, rocks, mountains, forests, islands and the night sky, opened an intrapersonal tunnel of the unknown and uninhabited corners of our wildly perplexed minds. It was clear that the artwork was positioned to represent the slow and ever-changing cycles of day and night.

Looking at Lefteris’ work, I had the feeling of being transported into the artist’s shelter (studio) in the midst of winter, somehow meeting the artist in a space of deep rationalisation and emotional catharsis; the experience embodied a contemplation on collective and personal concerns. I could get a sense of the intensive and focused labour, whilst Tapas gave form to paper cut-outs, textured surfaces and thorough decision-making on the earthly colour pigments and installing the many handmade variations in his work. The art is a meditation on material and form, making and composition. The art pieces although scattered around the gallery as a unified concept did not just stand at that but rather carried around the absence of their maker’s hand.

In one of the rooms, the sound of rain and wind coming from the film work placed me into a psychological forest as the hanging sheets of paper cut-outs resembled the dark shadows of intertwined tree branches and the large wall piece, also a black paper cut-out, reminded me of Rorschach inkblots. I stayed there for a while, exploring how deep into the forest I could make myself be, and as I watched the repetitive movements of handmade paper within a circle that mimicked the full moon's ethereality, I felt its gravity on an emotional level.

In all the works I found the resemblance of nature astonishing. Recently, whilst driving through the Cypriot mountains, I noticed the myriad layers of mountains, clouds, trees, and how the light seemed to emerge through, fall behind and reappear above. That’s when I had glimpse of what the artist must have seen, the aliveness and wholeness of the co-existing natural elements that he had successfully implemented and interpreted through his creations.

With the help of the artist the conscious spectator gains an existential gaze; the phenomenon of “Night” becomes one with esoteric thoughts and dreams while “Day” calls us to see nature anew.

@Iliana Demetriou

New Ways of Being & The Art of Outgrowing

© Iliana Demetriou

Priorities change while our internal focus shifts

We never become old news but we rather alter our direction; one that we see fit in re-creating our own path-intended, nurturing vessels to consolidate our unique blueprint. I emphasize the word internal for self-development as a realised internalism can give & receive without the need to boast or become impulsive.

Self-nurturing happens between and during conscious acts of identifying & rewriting our own patterns; a process that could take a lifetime. In every moment, we first nurture ourselves before we can nurture the other.

I’ve been reminiscing for the past few months, still am. Recent devastating global events outside of myself have been a personal trigger. Challenging aspects interrelated on a physical and emotional state, have been constantly kicking me out of my comfort zone, I admit that at times I find myself resisting the inevitable, only making things harder. Matters I used to having spend my energy on, now fleet. False and outgrown ideas are dissolving into sand. Anxiety appears as I try to grab onto some context to sit in comfortably, all repeatedly, resulting into failure.

Being stripped away from all past and symbolic context, in the moments spend whilst seeding the seed I go through a constant removal of myself from myself.

In a closer sense, it feels like i’m (out)growing, re-creating and re-organising my system. Mainly prioritizing a new set-built of ideals for a better self. Intuitively and methodically opening myself up to a new vessel.

Otherworldly Earth

Climate change is one of the most talked about global issues raising deep questions about the human race and its survival. On the art scene, it has righteously become a trend, as its urgency has to be presented in all ways and places possible to invoke the masses toward conscious action. Artwork influenced by the rising climate change phenomenon is undoubtedly educating, inspiring and significant as it brings awareness and engagement in a rippling effect, stimulating our long-forgotten primary instincts of how the planet nurtures our very existence and how we can intuitively nurture her back. Good or bad art can still be effective, as it is a part of a worldly movement calling forth a revolution in our ways of being.

Olafur Eliasson’s “Ice watch“ is the most known and effectual work in this space, where he transferred and installed thirty blocks of glacial ice from the Greenland ice sheet, in locations in Paris, Copenhagen and London. In doing so he provided a chance to directly experience what’s been happening in the Arctic and thoroughly indicate the fragility of the world we live. “Ice watch” is a sensorial reminder of places being impacted by climate change, which for most of the human population, are seen in documentaries and photographs. These participatory acts call forth a public action against ignorance and indifference, and encourage pushing boundaries in new ways of thinking about the environment, the human body and its place.

I’ve recently had the chance to visit LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura for Julian Charriere’s “Towards No Earthly Pole” , an unforgettable exhibition that had left me speechless.

On entrance to the exhibition, “The purchase of the north pole” is a mysteriously wrapped in textile object giving away a form of a cannon, aggressively, pointing towards you. Around it there seemed to be cannonballs but on a closer look, coconuts in lead ‘flesh’, with title “Pacific fiction”.

The main room of the exhibition was designed as a diorama, a dark space with a long screen projection horizontally placed at the back of the room, portraying a slow-paced video of glacial masses. The video led us through the life and journey of water, showing crystallised rocky surfaces, waterfalls and ice caves. The shots had been clearly taken at night with a spotlight carried by a drone, revealing the area in unnatural light and shade. The visuals were accompanied with spectral sounds of cracking ice and flowing water, giving an impression of a living landscape; breathing and moving.

The cave/womb-like feel of the space and the entirely covered floor of artificial bitumen, covered with a layer of gravel, creaked beneath my feet, placing me in an alienated environment of sensory experience. Scattered and laying around were large heavy, drilled-patterned rocks sitting on their own cylindrical parts. Their image instantly gave a symbolic meaning of the natural resources used for consumption; implying human intervention misinterpreting landscape and history.

Along the line of the projector there were mattresses laid on the floor, welcoming the viewers to lie down and silently participate in contemplation.

A subversive experience - slow paced as it was, time stopped and a gap in time appeared in my favor, to observe the familiar and alien landscape, a play between the real and imaginary, which strangely enough felt as a moving esoteric landscape with all it’s dark and light, noise and silence, violence and peacefulness, obscurity and clarity and other poetic and disturbing attributes. The flow of sounds and visuals felt as a part of me, alive and breathing, my being as the earth; the earth as my being.

Closing a loop of thoughts, in the entry room consisting also the exit phase, the two remaining installations felt destructive, man-made and terrifying, a kind of hell that is unfortunately not far from reality. The last video piece titled “And beneath it all, flows liquid fire”, shows a fire fountain that takes us back to the very basic elements of the earth; it’s core and its role for humanity - a contradictory element of survival and extinction, subtly stressing the ephemerality of all the living and inanimate things.

Julian Charriere has personally given me a new and refreshed perspective on Art and its power to connect and revolutionize.

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There are Suns Behind Suns

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Last month has been hectic, resulting in high levels of emotion. I felt relapsing one day and uplifted the next, then followed by another heady day. It takes courage and determination to actively pick up the energies and neutralise them, also to observe with compassion those inner dialogues. Adopting to the emotional fluidity felt difficult either when left alone or in engaging with others.

Throughout the month, questioning what made me feel good and what didn’t, seemed like a conscious underflow in my psyche igniting me to perceive and accept but at the same time to not disrespect my own needs or others. The physical and emotional sensitivities kept bringing me closer to myself by gently forcing me to confide in breathing and tune in meditation.

Circumstances and dynamics gradually synchronised and led me to stay on my own at a house situated in the mountain forest and finally rest. That sunny, early morning I had coffee and watermelon for breakfast then took a little walk around the house and up the little forest hill while I playfully imitated bird and cricket sounds until to a point where I started feeling irrelevant to my surroundings and to myself. I headed back to the house were I sat on the deck and began inhaling the view so I could fully participate in the present moment and pierce through the noise. Breathing in and out, I opened up my vortices —allowing the breeze to swirl my senses as I went up, travelling through the planes.

At the peak of my meditative state I felt contentment, a certain kind of natural high. I opened my eyes, and in those moments where your sight is in the process of adjusting and filling in the visual gaps, I realised how I was smoothly tuning in back into the matrix of earthly sensation — earth as a womb containing all things and further contained in a cosmic hologram. I observed everything happening around me with joy and understanding. There are Suns behind Suns, I thought.

That morning a heavy summer rain that lasted for about an hour guided me through the perfect grounding process, infusing me with rejuvenation.

Being Human

© Iliana Demetriou

We do the things we do so to bring ourselves closer to each other and if not that precisely then to realise ourselves and the world we live in through the other.

Shedding the old and bringing the new, through our ongoing spiral growth process; birthing new thought & feeling cells as we go along.

Each one of us has an individual way of seeing and perceiving and it is our human privilage to find ways to communicate in alignment to our genetic-creative blueprint.

It is perplexing, how on the surface matters seem to be permanent,

but beyond that surface there is a constant flow of insight moving in wave-like form; evoking the mindweb to translate stimuli through the senses,

branching it out in our system through chemical substances.

When I allow information through ritualistic practice,

I realise that infinite possibility cannot be pinned down and I burst into laughter for trying to solidify/conceptualise and hold on to ideas.

Observing Social Nuances

“The hardest part of living is to exist truthfully; especially if it means exhibiting parts of life in public. We’ve all learned to survive in a new world where the depersonalization of truth has become the lasting circumstance of every human interaction, it’s people I swear I miss the most.”

— Lara Konrad, Collecteurs Magazine

Is the world becoming less real due to the lack of significance?

Have you ever left a conversation feeling like you have wasted valuable time because of all the meaningless interaction?! and all those thoughts you have expressed and put forward, were somehow broken down to the minimum of their meaning.

Since I came across the above quote in an interview article on Collecteurs magazine I cannot get it off my mind, in just a few lines it communicates how we face up in the present-day society; depersonalising truths and lacking intimacy with one another. We live in a world where image, status and recognition is more important than anything else. It’s seeming very likely that some of us are under Plato’s allegory of the cave — forming alter egos, replacing self-esteem with narcissism; constantly trying to feed an unconscious drive of justifying our at-core “small” acts and desires to ourselves. As social media is deeply embedded in our daily lives, we are further manipulated in the way we view ourselves and the world around us.

Intimacy, vulnerability and truthfulness are today’s luxuries, not only for creating that space with another person, but also the courage, love and respect needed so to maintain healthy relationships. It is in our best interest to generate trust in our social circles — to dare believe that deep down in someone’s being we can find resonance or have an honest conversation without implicit commenting, to be capable to smile sincerely, think in depth and speak in an all-inclusive vision instead of focusing on mechanical-personal interest. Why has it become a daily urge to shove our opinion and perception on to others instead of heartfully listen and what do these acts validate at any core, either individual or collective? What will it take to make space for language and pure feeling coexist.

It is fundamentally acceptable, that your work environment and lifestyle might require you to keep this cold and diplomatic exterior (at some degree) so to get things done, but I have noticed that people falsely view this state as a form of superiority, acting it out through all their interactions, eliminating any possibility of becoming a catalyst and enchance interactions in proufound ways. Being human is to be imperfect, expressing vulnerability isn’t shameful but rather a long process of reaching clarity and we shouldn’t take it away from ourselves or others, especially in these strange times we live in.

In contemplation of those few lines, I think that stepping out of ourselves for a few milliseconds so to find true aloneness and belonging without the need of material possesion or self-projection should become our meditative daily practice in finding significance within and without.

“The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it’s not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of another person—without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the other leaves, they will be as happy as they are now. Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, because it is not given by the other.”

— Osho

“You can’t take it with you” Text in neon found in Berlin

© Iliana Demetriou (__i_____d)

Art through 'White'

The word "spirituality" carries a lot of baggage, often being associated with religious traditions and social structures.

What is spirituality when it is cut off from its historical drama and how can we evoke the presence of this feeling through art?

'The islands' by Agnes Martin, Tate Modern, 2015

Image found via the internet

'Blind Light' by Anthony Gormley, Hayward Gallery, 2007

Image found via the internet

W h i t e

 In the Western world, emptiness is usually considered to be a lack, a space to be filled rather than a space seen as it is; an encouragement to empty ourselves from the superfluities of everyday life.

White is the absence of colour, a non-colour, a non-mixed singular entity - a possibility. Contemporary Minimalism relies on void and possibility as it gives off an idea of the empty unknown as a powerful simplicity and, in some cases, as a forceful trigger for profound communication and understanding.

In a modern outlook, the void is a space in transit, an empty vessel to listen, explore and rediscover the innermost self.

. . .

  Agnes Martin at Tate Modern in 2015 was an experience that has stayed with me. I have been studying her work and ideas and I admire her significantly contemplative pieces and artistic precision. However, it is not until you encounter the artwork personally and from up close that you can feel the artist's presence and truly appreciate her work. Agnes's work captures a sense of the timeless by replacing essence with presence. 

  "The Islands" series are twelve squares in the scale of 182.9cm with hand-drawn grids in acrylic and graphite pencil on faint-white painted linens, The paintings in the exhibition space induced a feeling of emptiness — an invite to slow down and show respect as the delicate graphite traces, calculated marks and ghostly whiteness awoke a deep and reflective stillness within.

  I remember myself moving close to observe the delicate work in its fine detail and then standing back in the room's centre, silently inhaling a 'blank' yet full atmosphere. Contemplating "the islands" they visually contemplate back, channeling a form of communication; a sending and a receiving, making thought-language aware of itself, like when you keep repeating a word and it suddenly empties out of context.

 In Martin's paintings, white works relative to the soft and subtle graphite marks which seem to emerge out of the fainted white surface, transmitting a transient vibe. The more you move further from "The islands" the artist hand-drawn marks start to merge and disappear in the white void-like background.

The Artwork produces an experience of catharsis, tracing a deep admiration.

'The islands' by Agnes Martin

Image found via the internet

'Blind Light' by Anthony Gormley

Image found via the internet

  Back in 2007 exhibited at the Hayward gallery, was 'Blind Light' by Anthony Gormley. The cube room was a cloud-filled glass space that was wet and disorientating, in this uncanny space the spectator was invited to interact by entering into the white light and vapour. Similarly, the subject of thought-language awareness appears, uncomfortably and yet pleasantly, introducing the self to the (inner) self. Gormley's spatial sculpture placed the experiencer in the uncomfortable position of losing their sense of sight and subsequently spatial coordination.

  Entering the space, I recall myself inhaling the mist, trying to grab on a memory, hoping to make the experience more pleasant. In the "fight-or-flight" response, smell, taste and hearing sharpen and the subconscious flow of imagination is enhanced; evoking the senses to interlink through memory and to form intrapersonal connections. To lose the sense of "I" that is built through the human senses can be quite an unsettling experience.Clearing the mind in the absence of the known, and in the presence of the unknown, is an exhilirating and pleasant emotion. As you walk through the spatial structure, conscious attention flows on the breath, past and future dissolve, placing you fully in the present.

  By the end, the room had left me with a renewed sense of wonder,  questioning material possesions in the means of comfort zone and mental capability. 'Blind light' gently transitioned the environment into a white lucid dream where the boundlessness of space and loss of control turn into positive and deepened states of perceiving; a reminder to tune in with our most personal and collective existential values.

  Spirituality is being aware that you are an experiencer; an awareness beyond the sense of "I"; symbolism, ideals and identification. It is an opening up to welcoming the unknown and to bringing about an awakening and a widening of our sensory organs. Experiences such as the fore-mentioned art exhibitions could possibly challenge and welcome into being new organs of perception, as a result of an innate necessity to comprehend the incomprehensible.

Image © Iliana Demetriou @__i_____d

" I've always felt that every morning the poet should stand at the window and remember that nothing that they see, not a bird or a stone, has in its possession the name they give it.

When we allow silence to reclaim those objects and things of the world, when we allow the words to fall away from them;

they reassume their own genius and repossess something of their mystery, their infinite possibility " 

— T.S Elliot

Still life | Lighting design components

still life photography, lighting design components

Playing with materials + composition. 

Architectures of waiting

@__i_____d

Book cover of Architectures of waiting photographs by Ursula Schulz-Donburg

  One early September morning, a couple of years ago, I enter a bookshop in London and my eye is instantly drawn to a photographic book called Architectures of waiting by Ursula Schulz - Dornburg. The book is filled with stunning images of concrete, brutalist, architectural bus stops.  I'm convinced of its relevance to myself somewhere between the use of black and white consistency of photographic forms and its title implying psychological time. 

  Flash forward to the 1st of June 2017,  I decided to take a walk along the seaside of my small town. After a half an hour's walk, I arrive at a viewpoint sitting area; a well-made concrete, architectural structure. I think to myself that I'm where I'm supposed to be at that moment. In that knowing, I take my perfect shot and smile gratefully.   

  I'm fascinated by the idea of synchronicity, by how all events seem interlinked, so as to evoke beginnings or endings to our personal and collective life cycles. Synchronicities happen in a state of mind in which awareness becomes heightened. They are a subtle reminder that you are a part of something bigger; a part of a collective whole that goes beyond your perception of time. And when the every-day leaves you feeling drained with a cloudy conscience, it only takes a seemingly random choice to pick up the signs; the underlying indicators that you are experiencing what you are supposed to for the sake of self-development and self-actualization. In these tiny fractures of time in which you perceive a connectivity in all events, you are confronting the art of "epiphany" or the so-called "perfect timing".

  Creativity has so many aspects, directions and mediums. In the last few years, I felt desperate to find a solid idea to devote myself to and make a living. I kept moving from one job/mindset to the other, always filled with ideas on how to move on with my creative practice but somehow lacking in my work discipline, methods and research. In short, I was financially and emotionally broken and that’s how existential angst and depression took a big part of my energy and every happening was a chain reaction, influencing all other aspects of my personal life.

 In the meantime besides all the constant worrying, wherever I went, I kept taking abstracted architectural shots, playing with light compositions and still lifes with my crappy, outdated iPhone. I used to sharpen, crop, desaturate and brighten my photos on apps, then post them on social media just for the fun of it.

@__i_____d

  Long story short, what had started as a hobby then grew into a full-time project. I had closed a deal with an architecture company to create and direct their portfolio in exchange for a proper camera equipment. This led to being noticed by other creatives, more commissioned work and collaboration opportunities became available. Although these occurrences have enabled my creative expression, I still have a long journey in achieving my goals and aspirations but now being clear-sighted, I can pick up the signs with stamina and determination. 

Arrivals and Departures

  We will always be unknowingly arriving at and simultaneously departing from stages in our lives, until the final unknowing; death. One beginning is another ending and vice versa. Personally, I don't believe in coincidence, in the sense of not taking responsibility or initiative for your own life but I do believe in synchronicity as a reference point, a motivator and an inspiration, a source of strength and an understanding that a cell belongs to a macrocosm equally as to a microcosm. 

 Through the difficulties that life has thrown at me so far, I've learned that while you patiently work towards something, you have the ability to architect your own thoughts and habits according to your imagined vision. 

" Synchronicity conveys the holographic nature of our physical reality and the illusory notion of time. By practising the art of detachment and attentiveness the mind is kept open in perceiving possibilities. "

- I.