“This is the place gentlemen!” (“Here is the place of the Lord!”). Giorgos Seferis repeats this verse several times in the poem “O Stratis Thalassinos si Nekri Thalassa”, which he wrote in early July 1942, when he was in exile in the Middle East, talking about refugees, the eradication, the devastation of mankind. . As he himself said, he saw this phrase written on a piece of paper in a monastery in Jerusalem, and it was “a blow to the head.” It was not what he expected to read in such a place – it reminded him of an announcement in an English pub about the latest round of orders. “It was at the same time as a symbol of the insoluble confusion we now live in, in the tone of a very thick farce.” By writing a verse in English in his poem, he further emphasized the feeling of alienation.

This phrase today “mute echo” sounds on the ground floor of the Goethe-Institut in Athens. OUR visual artist Maria Tsagari in the installation of the same name, he formed it from dark-colored human hair – from a distance it resembles spreading ink. Since 2017, Tsagari has been studying the ritual procedures associated with her. A haircut from antiquity to the present day, as well as the legal and illegal trade in hair. As the creator herself told reporters during our tour of the Eurovision exhibition. Crossing Athens”, in the context of which the work is presented, cutting hair symbolizes a transition, a transition, a transition during which the former identity is often abandoned. and a new one is accepted. Hair is cut sometimes as part of a sacrifice, sometimes as a sign of mourning, to change personality, to eliminate sexuality, or to humiliate, exclude and punish people.

At the same time, hair is a commodity. In the early 1900s, according to Tsagari, immigrants who arrived in America cut off 15,000 strands of hair. “I was interested to see the extent to which this practice continues today.”

“In Tsagari’s work, the repetition of a certain verse of the poem creates a kind of irony and points not only to the multi-valued Greek and European identity (of which immigration is an important pillar), but also to the problems that accompany identity. narratives,” explains Ioli Tzanetaki, curator and exhibition consultant for EMST, which presents the exhibition in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut. “Greece, as a geographical border between East and West, remains a gateway, a place metaphorically equivalent to a ritual passage from one country to another. The word “gentlemen” at the end of the sentence is ironic and suggests the absence of women in the official history of Europe.”

Regional Perspective

Joint traveling exhibition “Eurovision. Crossing Athens is a project of the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen aimed at popularizing the work of German artists abroad. Before arriving in Athens – in a somewhat “shortened” version – it was presented at the Museum of the History of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as at the Museum of Modern Art of Vojvodina in Serbia, exploring the idea of ​​European identity from the perspective of the “periphery” rather than Central or Northern Europe. The Berlin art group “Slavs and Tatars” opens an exhibition at the Goethe-Institut Athen with the “Pickle Bar” project, a commentary on the “sour” social contract. Also of interest is Adnan Softić’s installation “Meeting Room”, which explores the destruction of diversity in Europe through iconic images. From Greece, the artist chose the destruction of Europe’s largest Jewish cemetery in Thessaloniki by the Greek authorities during the German occupation.

In the basement, in addition to the works of Tsagaris, there is an impressive photo exhibition by Joanna Diehl about the presence of absence and the substitution of memory. Among other things, he photographed theaters and cinemas during the war in Sarajevo, as well as destroyed churches in the occupied territories.