Her talent is multifaceted: in painting, sculpture, weaving, photography, installations, stage design, costume design and even dance. But her most important work goes beyond art and concerns history. For several years now, Artemis Alkalai has been conducting meticulous research to meet and photograph the last Greek survivors of the concentration camps. Sensing that soon their physical presence would disappear, she did her best to preserve their image and words. On the occasion of World Holocaust Remembrance Day, a double open-air exhibition of the artist, who studied with Moralis and Mitaras, opened a few days ago at Vasilisa Sophia, and will run until the end of the month.

The first tribute is called “The Holocaust of the Greek Jews 1941-1944” with photographs of witnesses, and the second “Trauma as memory and life” with her works. Back in 2010, the artist symbolically focused on the house to talk about loss, death, persecution. “Home is the place where we all grew up, received love, native language, care and affection in peacetime. And this is what was lost, shaken, disappeared, destroyed during the war. So with this symbolic home I traveled the world, met Holocaust survivors, Greeks from the Nazi camps, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, and in the same photographic plane I captured this symbol as the archetype of all those who lost, but also those who they got a second life,” says Alcalai.

The exhibition was opened by the Mayor of Athens with the head of the Jewish Museum of Greece, Makis Matsa, in the presence of the Israeli Ambassador to Greece, Noam Katz. “Greece has lost over 80% of its pre-war Jewish population. Artemis Alkalai’s works place us in a microcosm of the Greek Jews’ refuge house during the occupation. We are moving from “before” to “after”, from “inside” comfort and security to “outside” persecution and destruction”, stressed Kostas Bakoyannis. “It’s not enough to just say ‘never again’ and never again experience the Nazi atrocities of the last century. They should be accompanied by initiatives like the current one,” Makis Matsas added.

“It’s an active concept of memorization. This means that we have to work hard every day,” said Noam Katz. The opening ceremony was attended by Dimitris Kayrides, President of the Greece-Israel Parliamentary Friendship Group, Vice President Olga Kefalogiannis, Daniel Benardou, representative of the Central Jewish Council of Greece, Albertos Tarambulos, President of the Israeli community of Athens, and others.