Project Info
The Exhibition focuses on the special value of handmade works and attempts to highlight a valuable process that tends to withdraw from our lives during the dynamic onset of digital technology.
The art of mosaic, one of the centuries-old poetic expressions of material "reality", invites us to connect with the transformative process of matter, with its wear and tear and breakage, with the endurance of our bodies, but also with more abstract concepts such as: presence, absence, memory, the multiple qualities of time, the excerpt, composition and interpretation or imperfection as a characteristic of uniqueness.
The creation of a mosaic invites us to connect with our status as natural beings of a transforming world and to reflect anew on the inherited values of Mediterranean humanism / the philosophical and lived perception of our existence as an integral part of a broader natural and –now technological– world.
The exhibition presents a series of mosaics applied to tables of different dimensions. They are inspired by ancient Greco-Roman mosaic motifs, which have been chosen for their simplicity. Iconographic perfection is not sought, but the aim is to highlight, through the simplicity of the arrangement of their tesserae, the beauty of each handmade work: its authenticity.
The mosaics are created with handmade marble tesseare of various colours, while nuggets of gold tiles refer to the transition of this art from Greco-Roman Antiquity to the Byzantine world. The concept of transition through the art of mosaic will be the core of the discussion that will take place on 29/8/25 with Silvia Ronchey, Professor of Byzantine Culture at Roma Tre University and author of the book "The Last Image" (La Ultima Imagine).
In the same room, my tools as a mosaicist are presented.
As well, the work "Wave", which is inspired by the statues of the Antikythera shipwreck
In the second room, photographs of larger mosaic-works applied on floors and walls are presented.
In the screen, videos record the use of mosaics as elements of poetic installations of contemporary art. The architectural, archaeological or natural spaces that surround them constitute an integral part of them.
More information can be found at www.christinanakou.gr
Silvia Ronchey is Professor of Byzantine Culture at the Department of Humanities of the Roma Tre University in Rome https://www.silviaronchey.it/