I don’t know if these are my Cycladic ancestors, but the smells of wild plants growing on the windswept slopes of these islands come from my nose straight into my heart. The aromas of thyme, sage and fennel give me an irresistible thrill. That’s why, when Dimitra Skandali opened the door of her workshop in Aliki, Paros, and all these scents enveloped me, I felt that, finally, contemporary art produced in Greece can have a personality, and not be like all these incomprehensible ( in my eyes at least) things that I see in exhibitions that could be made anywhere in the world. This is what shocked me when I first saw her visual work, which uses flowers, spartans, algae, boat fragments as raw materials, in two amazing group exhibitions curated by Kostas Prapoglu held in one of the abandoned buildings in the psychiatric complex in Daphne, and recently at the Art Gallery of Athens.

Skandali (born 1969 in Paros) is what we would call homemade in art. Her family had large ships that carried all the goods to and from the island decades ago. Later they were engaged in the land business, in which she also worked for many years. Something inside her was pushing her to become an artist, but she didn’t know how. He took some drawing lessons at the Aegean Art Center and passed his exams at the Academy of Fine Arts, moving to Athens. Upon graduation, he applied to various schools abroad and thus lived in California for ten years. Although it was an escape from the only world he identified with (Paros), he eventually gave it up and began to make works from seaweed (Pacific and Aegean), humble flowers and herbs growing in the Cyclades, embroideries, which learned. from mother and grandmother. Having already written her cycle in America, with the onset of the pandemic, she returned to her beloved Paros. She took her ancestral residence in Aliki and transformed it by creating three artist-in-residence spaces that host international artists 25 days a month, a small gallery, and her own studio, which I visited. The project is called Cycladic Arts – Paros Artist Hospitality Center, and it shows that our islands can become a launching pad not only for digital nomads, but also for amazing visual artists who will come here even in winter to experience the very smells that can bind you. with magic like me.