“Rick Lowe is a great traveler, he crosses Athens from one end to the other,” architect Giorgos Tsirtzilakis, co-curator of the “Hic sunt dracones” (Dragons Here) exhibition opens tonight at the Benaki/Piraeus Museum. 138 tells me.

Perhaps this information would not be important to a visual artist like Lowe if his work and this particular project, subtitled “Map of the Unknown”, were not closely related to the movement. When walking, moving, moving. With the creation and destruction of the world as we know it and as others have known it before us. Is migration the reason why continents are drawn in the first place today?

In his own way, the American artist creates visual drawings in very large paintings that translate his experience of the human communities of cities into composition and dynamic color. He specifically mentions topographic maps that he was able to find here thanks to the Archive of Apostolos Doxiadis.

“His great maps speak of knowledge, mine speak of uncertainty,” the artist explains as he walks us through the exhibition. He comes from a family of African Americans who arrived in Alabama, USA, several generations ago. Through the years and changing times, on foot or by any means available, his men made their way to Chicago and the Great Lakes region. The same area was mapped by Apostolos Doxiadis, and the parallel presentation of Lowe’s work, with various objects and well-chosen treasures from the Benaki Museum’s rich historical, folklore and archaeological collections, explains the significance of this particular exhibition.

Polina Kosmadaki and Giorgos Tzirtzilakis boldly, sensitively, but at the same time with knowledge of the matter, connect this modern artist from Houston – a favorite of Larry Gagosian – with embroideries from Naxos, drawings by Nikos-Gabriel Pentzikis, medieval maps and rare portolans of the 17th and 18th centuries.

In the exhibition space of the first floor of the museum, 25 large-scale works and more than 100 objects coexist, connecting different cultures, eras and worldviews. Maps, atlases, as well as a number of artifacts of folk culture are primarily tools for “designing” and “reconstructing” the world, playing a role in depicting spatial relationships, fixing historical changes and national identities. The exhibition highlights these images of the unknown that are central to the work of Lowe, who has previously worked with local communities in his city. Given today’s conditions where everything is recorded and controlled, these juxtapositions may indicate a way to rethink where we are and what art has to offer in recording unknown new fields. Signs, that is, where the old cartographers placed wild beasts, dragons or lions to show their ignorance.