In the Same Space is an artistic dialogue initiated by photographer Eirini Vourloumis (b. 1979) with the oeuvre of her grandfather, painter Andreas Vourloumis (1910-1999). Eirini Vourloumis juxtaposes photos she shot with her mobile phone while wandering around Athens with works by Andreas Vourloumis depicting the city that date back more than half a century: paintings, watercolours, drawings and poems. Though the media are different, the process, a form of flânerie through the Greek capital, is the same.
The exhibition comprises 32 pairs of photos in dialogue with a number of paintings and watercolours by Andreas Vourloumis, chosen by Eirini Vourloumis herself. Two artists register the city of Athens in different ways at different times, highlighting daily life, characteristic locations and hidden corners of the city. The dialogue between the two artists reveals uncanny connections and surprising continuities, mostly to be found in the details of the landscapes and interior spaces, but also in terms of colour and form. The exhibition creates a link between post-WWII Athens, as depicted in the drawings of an accomplished painter of that time, and modern-day Athens, as documented by Eirini Vourloumis during her wanderings. These images highlight both the timelessness of the city, but also reveal the changes that have defined the city as it is today. The exhibition is a meditation on urban change, on spaces or places that have been lost, but also a tribute to the artist’s grandfather. In that sense it is at once highly personal and emotional, at the same time a social and anthropological take on a city that has undergone rapid transformation in the last fifty years. There is both nostalgia and poetry in this work, but seen through the eyes of two different generations. What has been lost? What has stayed the same? What needs to be cherished and preserved? How do we remember and experience the cities we live in? How do we recall the memory of those who once walked the same streets as us? These are some of the questions raised in the project.
Curated by Stamatis Schizakis
ARTISTS
Eirini Vourloumis was born in 1979 in Athens, Greece and is of Greek and Indonesian descent. She graduated from the Parsons School of Design and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in New York. Apart from her artistic endeavours as a photographer, Eirini Vourloumis has also worked as a photojournalist for newspapers, magazines and blogs such as The New York Times, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, focusing primarily on the refugee crisis and the impact of the economic crisis on Greece. Her personal works include the Party like there is no tomorrow photo series on the 2015 national elections, a photographic series based on the novel The Mermaid Madonna, by Stratis Myrivilis concerning the recent influx of immigrants to Skala Sikaminias, and the In Waiting, a photographic depiction of Athens as a physical stage for the economic crisis. Works by Eirini Vourloumis have been exhibited, among other places, at Bozar, Brussels, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin and at The Benaki Museum, Athens. Her first book, In Waiting, was published in 2017 by Hatje Cantz Publishing, Germany. Eirini Vourloumis is a member of the Greek collective Depression Era Project.
Her work will also be featured in the group exhibition Statecraft (and beyond), on view at EMΣΤ from June 17th to October 30th, 2022.
Andreas Vourloumis was born in Patras in 1910 and died in Athens in 1999. He studied chemistry, and also worked for a while as a chemist, but devoted himself to the study of painting. He even settled in Paris for a brief period. His house was in Kolonaki and his atelier in Pangrati, both neighbourhoods in central Athens. Andreas Vourloumis filled hundreds of notebooks that he always carried with him, with drawings and watercolours, mostly of scenes from everyday life in Athens.
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