Untitled (Mesogheia), 2016-2022
Sculpture made by bank bills, homemade glue, gold paint (from Germany), wood
ΕΜΣΤ Collection Acquired 2022
In Jennifer Nelson’s Untitled (Mesogheia) different strands and timelines of Greek social experience converge and overlap, conjuring an almost talismanic object. Modeled after a traditional bridal dress from Eastern Attica—a garment historically embellished with rich symbols of fertility, growth, and future prosperity—Nelson’s dress replaces the fine textiles and gold stitching the original item would have been made of with accumulated paper bank statements and debt letters, held together with homemade glue and coated in German gold paint. Meticulously handcrafted at the height of the country’s recent, devastating fiscal crisis, the work is layered with contradictions: bankruptcy and abundance, debacle and survival, dejection and sustained hope. Nelson’s humble, mundane materials—tokens of stifling bureaucracy and stringent economic structures—transmute into a work that is at once extraordinary and deeply haunting: an embodiment of debt and of the will to rise above it.
“In discussion and collaboration with grandmothers and other crafters of Paiania, and advice from the local vestiary (Imatiothiki) for traditional costumes, a dress, faithful to its origins is lovingly crafted. […] We sit together, joining our heavy materials in quiet solidarity. We recuperate the energy of paper and suffering. We use its matter to reaffirm our dignity and desire for renewal.” Nelson’s often performative practice taps into communal dynamics and collective art-making to interrogate ongoing social, economic, political, and environmental crises in the Mediterranean and beyond. Geographically situated at the frontline of global migration, austerity, and ecological fragility, her work treats the human body as the vital site where these regional pressures are physically registered. Drawing from her background in dance, she consistently seeks “to reimagine social and ecological choreographies”. Part commentary on the harmful political and ecological habits of our time, part hands-on engagement with healing and restorative action, Nelson’s practice relies on collaborative, trauma-informed, sustainable art-making—channeling resistance to passive consumption and advocating a dismantling of destructive behaviours in our relationship with society, politics, and the natural world.
Jennifer Nelson was born in Pennsylvania, USA. She lives and works in Athens.
