ANADYSIS ΙΙ

Venia Dimitrakopoulou, Anadysis II, 2023

Athens International Airport is more than just a transportation hub. It serves as a meeting point for diverse cultures and peoples and represents the first and last impression of Greece for millions of passengers annually.

The site-specific sculptural installation ANADYSSIS II by Venia Dimitrakopoulou has found a home at the suburban railway station of Athens International Airport, adding another significant piece to the continuously evolving artistic landscape of the airport, which is constantly developing its cultural identity through numerous cultural and artistic collaborations.

The work, suspended from the dome of the suburban station, invites passersby to momentarily lift their gaze upwards and experience, even if briefly, a sense of emergence and spiritual upliftment.

A metal mesh holds and supports, while an octagonal glass dome, as a “public receiver,” welcomes words and phrases. “Ξένος. A stranger. Ξένος παντού. N’ ανήκω κάπου. To belong. Με ακούει κάνεις; My voice is not heard.” Amid the words visualized to express and reflect the insecurity of the 21st-century human, large, metallic, curved forms hover.

Artist Venia Dimitrakopoulou, creator of “ANADYSIS II”, states:

“I am deeply interested in creating site-specific, place-based works, which are born from and for each space in a way that is entirely organic.

An airport is a quintessential transitional space, a place of passage, where people come and go in haste because they have a clear destination. What happens when most of us seem to have lost our own destination today? Can art and the artist reverse the disorientation in which we all find ourselves, to some extent? Can the artist’s voice be heard? Is the connection with others a prerequisite for even this momentary emergence? Is art one of the ways to connect and communicate with others? Can art and culture become a canopy, a refuge, a shelter? Can they become a network that connects us, while simultaneously protecting us from the insecurity of the times we are living in?”

Dr. Evangelia Diamantopoulou, Associate Professor at the Department of Communication and Media Studies, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA), writes:

“With her work Anadyssis II, at the dome of the suburban railway station at Athens International Airport, Vénia Dimitrakopoulou brings back the issue of the ‘other,’ xenos, which has preoccupied her in previous artistic creations, but with a different meaning. This time, she does not define the ‘other’ in relation to another person, in a specific place and time. She refers to the modern human being who has lived and continues to live in the uncertainty of the pandemic, war, ecological disaster, constant mutation, and alienation from their own self. The person who feels trapped in an unprecedented, foreign, and grim reality. A person who realizes that the other person is equally alienated and trapped in a situation from which they cannot escape […]

The light, curving forms invite one to find the strength to escape from this earthly dystopia and emerge.

These forms are the dedal wings for the flight towards freedom.”

Dr. Charis Kannelopoulou, art historian, comments: “The work ‘Anadyssis II’ by Venia Dimitrakopoulou at the dome of the railway station at the Athens International Airport appears in a transitional space, a place of movement and fleeting pause, a space of ‘in transit’ condition. Installed in an in-between place, which for some signifies arrival and for others departure to the next destination, the work seeks to emphasize the constant variability of this socio-spatial dialectic.
[…] The artist isolated emphatic words and phrases […] to form an unexpected ‘narrative mark’ within the public space.
Within the public space of many voices, Dimitrakopoulou points to the articulation of each individual’s unique voice, which, however, universally and deeply human, expresses its own truth.
[…] These words invite observers to temporarily find themselves in the position of the other, but perhaps also to recognize their own position within this discourse.
The work Anadyssis is hosted in a public space with non-place characteristics, in the sense of using an in-between space for transition and a shift towards a different condition.”

Venia Dimitrakopoulou, Anadysis II, 2023, etalbond aluminium panels