“1981” (Allagi), 2007
Photographs & magazine cuttings on cardboards
ΕΜΣΤ Collection
Acquired 2022
In “1981” (Allagi), Vangelis Vlahos presents photographic documents retrieved from the archive of the far-right newspaper Eleftheros Kosmos [“Free World”] (1966–1982), which served as the official newspaper of the military junta regime (1967–1974). These photographs, which Vlahos purchased at a flea market, span nine months, from October 1981 to June 1982, and are presented in chronological order, without any further selection criteria. The photographs depict figures and events from the topical political and social affairs of the era, as well as scenes from Greek everyday life. The final months of the newspaper’s publication coincided with the first months of Greece’s governance by the socialist PASOK party, which had won the elections under the slogan “Allagi” [Change]. In the political climate of the time, “Allagi” promised a radical transformation of Greek society and its economic and political life, advocating social justice through which the country’s most vulnerable social groups—those who had largely suffered oppression under the post-civil war state—would finally be vindicated. By merely juxtaposing the newspaper’s photographs, the artist seeks to reconstruct this pivotal period in modern Greek history.
Vangelis Vlahos’s work includes installations and videos, as well as photographs and archival material that he studies, reclassifies, and processes to elicit new interpretations. Through a research-based practice, Vlahos examines historical events and how they are registered within collective memory, proposing new ways of reading dominant narratives. In “1981” (Allagi), the viewer encounters a wide range of events from both domestic and international politics of the era, alongside social and crime reporting, news from the art world, and personalities from society columns and pop culture. The artist has created a new, unmediated archive of historical documents, one that requires active viewing so that the spectator may independently discover—through associations, juxtapositions, and dialectical relationships—both the historical significance of the documents and their current relevance.
Vangelis Vlahos was born in 1971 in Athens, where he lives and works.
