From 1976 onwards, Niki Kanagini would incorporate three colours – rose, aqua, and teal – into her work, which function as symbols of, and vehicles for cultural memory. As she herself noted in 1979: “You might describe rose as pink, aqua as blue, and teal as a fresh almond green [vert amande]. Blue is found across the Mediterranean, pink and almond green are used to paint houses in both England and Greece, the Botticelli Venus statuette can be bought at May Day celebrations held in Néa Filadélfia [an area of Athens], and ivy grows in the gardens of Greece and Rome.”
In this work, the diverse mix of elements drawn from Greek and European visual culture – such as concrete balusters or cheap reproductions of Western art motifs – spotlights the complexity and inherent contradictions of the cultural identities that are being shaped in the Greek landscape immediately after the fall of the military dictatorship in Greece in 1974 [a period known as the “Metapolítefsi” – the time of regime change]. Kanagini’s approach regarding the reuse of old utilitarian objects and their replicas as decorative and nostalgic symbols is clearly set against the culture of mass consumerism and kitsch that was emerging at that time amid the stratified classes spawned
by post-war urbanisation.
