Keeping Watch, 1997
Photograph
ΕΜΣΤ Collection
Presented as part of the D.Daskalopoulos Collection Gift
In Keeping Watch, Konstantin Kakanias employs one of the most recognisable figures in Greek national iconography: the tsoliás, i.e. the ceremonial Evzone guard. However, he subverts the symbol’s heroic and monumental character by staging an image of comic absurdity, out of time and place: the tsoliás lies in wait on the rooftop of an Athenian apartment building, his rifle poised, against the backdrop of a bank sign. The carefully arranged pose, the affected stillness, and the photograph’s almost performative quality reveal the symbol’s nature as a construct and a public role. This shift is central to Kakanias’s practice, as he often uses humour, disguise, and irony to reconsider cultural stereotypes. Here, “Greekness” is not presented as a fixed essence but as an image or narrative whose context and meaning can be altered. Humour functions as a means for destabilising the familiar, allowing for a more nuanced reading of collective identity.
In Keep Watch, Konstantin Kakanias photographs a male figure dressed in the fοustanella and tsarouchia (i.e. the traditional skirt-like garment once worn by men in Greece and the Balkans and the characteristic leather shoes with a turned-up toe, capped with a black wool pom-pom) of the Evzone guard, yet placed in a setting far removed from the monumental and official character of the national symbol. The figure’s posture, the staged immobility, and the subtly paradoxical atmosphere of the work create a sense of theatricality and ambiguity. Kakanias thus displaces the tsoliás from the realm of national representation into a space of performance and role-playing, where ‘Greekness’ emerges as an image that can be reproduced, enacted, and reinterpreted. Through humour and staging, the work offers an ironic yet affectionate reading of cultural identity.
Konstantin Kakanias was born in Athens in 1961. He lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
