Baa3 Country Ceiling, 2014
Colour photograph on Plexiglas, metal frame, marble
ΕΜΣΤ Collection
Acquired 2022
Baa3 Country Ceiling is the first work in the Country Ceilings series by Antonis Pittas. It is a photographic sculpture focusing on the history and aesthetics of parliamentary architecture to explore the relationship between economics and politics. The sculpture features a large photograph of the Greek Parliament’s ceiling, mounted on pieces of marble, one of the primary materials used in the building’s construction. The ceiling is adorned with a modernist design from 1935 that incorporates the ancient decorative motif of the meander, a pattern often appropriated to serve diverse ends and, at times, wildly contradictory political ideologies. When the work was first created in 2014, its title was Caa3, referring to the sovereign credit rating assigned to Greece by the credit rating agency Moody’s in late 2013. Each time the rating changes, the work is renamed accordingly. Its current title is Baa3 Country Ceiling. The work connects an economic term indicating the threshold of dangerous public debt with the ceilings of European Parliament buildings, creating a visual metaphor for the European and Greek crises.
Antonis Pittas’s work engages with contemporary social and political issues rooted in history. His installations draw inspiration from architecture, design, art history, the performing arts, and their respective social dynamics. In Baa3 Country Ceiling, Pittas uses the economic crisis in Europe and its impact on Greek socioeconomic reality as a starting point to examine the relationship between politics and aesthetic representation. The Greek Parliament building functions as a multilayered symbol: among other things, it is the place where some of the most critical decisions about the country’s future are made, while at the same time constituting part of Greece’s historical, political, and cultural heritage. The work is a comment on the legacies of past generations and policies, as well as on the ways we navigate our own historical moment. First presented in Brussels, the de facto capital of the European Union, it acquired particular significance as it connected the Greek debt crisis with the broader European one and evoked the manifold aspects of the resulting chain reaction.
Antonis Pittas was born in Athens in 1973. He lives and works in Amsterdam.
