How his physiognomy and his collections Byzantine and Christian Museum can they fuel contemporary artistic creativity? What kind of poetic images are these, lending themselves to new artistic readings, building a dialogue that helps restore the viewer’s connection with art from the past to the present?

Personal exhibition of the artist Maria-Smaragdas Skurta titled “Byzantine Transcriptions. Gardens of the World, which has just launched at BCM, provides answers to these questions by building bridges between past and new eras. By stimulating the viewer’s memory, these “new visual derivatives,” as she describes her work, “create connections between the conscious and the unconscious.” The artist converses with the museum’s gardens as well as with the manuscript collections, creating compositions from details as they are told in Byzantine manuscripts. Having studied painting, sculpture and engraving at ASKT and continuing her studies in Byzantine art (Russian and Byzantine icons), as well as comprehending the technique of Japanese calligraphy, Ms. Skurta presents two series of works to the museum, which are part of the dynamic trend of contemporary art meeting archeology and history.

“The first section, entitled “Byzantine transcriptions”, includes compositions from copies of Byzantine manuscripts with hymns and friezes. All images – paintings, 3D constructions and digital works – originate from Christian Orthodox art and carry symbols of the animal or plant world and geometric decorative elements, ”comments art critic and curator of the exhibition Louise Karapidakis. The projection of specific images face to face literally “locks” the viewer’s gaze in a continuous process of repeated reading.

Visual artist Maria-Smaragda Skurta presents two series of works where contemporary art meets history.

“The second section “Visions” includes four sets of works with relief symbolic images that perform the function of mnemonic traces. Prosphora, tamats and amulets are tangible or intangible counter-gifts and emphasize their emotional load and deep semantic reference,” says Ms. Karapidaki. These are mixed compositions, consisting of porcelain fragments of reliefs in the Byzantine style, framed with layers of threads in skillfully executed wooden frames, and the completion of the unit is made of a floor surface of a mixed mosaic composition of porcelain, gold mosaic, fabrics. , threads and wood.

The longtime acquaintance of the artist with the artistic heritage of Byzantium helps her to recreate strict religious patterns and symbols in her own pictorial language with skill and respect. In this way, the works displayed on the first floor of the historic palace of the Duchess of Placencia, as a whole, turn into a means of introducing the public to highly symbolic art, while at the same time encouraging the visitor, in turn, to decipher it. but also reconstruct their own new realities.

Byzantine transcriptions. Light for gardens”, until October 27.