The diaspora experience proved foundational for the work of Niki Kanagini, underlying its thematic concerns but also her choice of materials and texts. The artist’s mother was born in Ortaköy (present-day Ivaylovgrad in Bulgaria), a small town where her maternal forebears had settled moving there from the Epirus region. It was a historical and cultural point of intersection, a cosmopolitan migration hub where Ottomans, Greeks, Armenians, and Jews co-existed. Her mother’s side of the family were twice displaced: first from Ortaköy to Alexandroupoli during the course of the Balkan Wars and the accompanying population exchange, and from there to Athens in 1939, driven by the impending threat of world war.
The exhibition opens with a monumental installation titled Displacement (2004) that presents magnified details of two pieces of “tsevrés”-style needlework featuring the gold-embroidered monograms of her grandparents – Christodoulos and Marigo – repeated many times over across the canvas. Their successive resettlements are linked to changes in name, from Ortaköy to Alexandroupoli and Athens, tracing the shifts and persistence of familial memory. In this work, the subjective experience of history is interwoven with collective experience and cultural dispersal. Commissioned by theatre theorist and art critic Eleni Varopoulou, the piece was created especially for the 2004 exhibition Life Paths: Nomads, Exiles, Refugees presented at the Zarifio Educational Academy in Alexandroupoli.
“I was born in Alexandroupoli. The migratory moves made by my mother’s side of the family were traumatic. The culture they carried with them was boundless. The stories my grandmother and mother told aways began with the words: ‘Back where we come from…’ Their longing for all they once had, for all they had lost was immense. The writing that appears on this work of mine titled Displacement serves as a small key of sorts for viewers and readers, one that I hope will help them go off on journeys, wherever and however they wish. My mother Eleni Konsta–Koutli and her sister Ekaterini Konsta–Vassiliou studied at the Zarifio Academy in Alexandroupoli. I always held on to any items my mother gave me with the utmost care. She once gave me a small piece of gold– embroidered fabric left over from her wedding dress; my piece titled Wedding Dress sprang from it. Displacement alludes to two pieces of ‘tsevrés’–style embroidery owned by my family that bear the initials – also embroidered in gold – of my grandparents, Marigo and Christodoulos.”
