[un]known destinations, chapter II: shell // the politics of being, 15th high school, Kypseli, Athens, curator Dr Kostas Prapoglou
Breathing Space, a two-channel video installation by Mary Christea, creates an oneiric situation where upon entering the basement area visitors are confronted by sea waves placidly invading the floor and its adjacent walls. Choosing this particular location – an area marking the physical beginning of the tunnel leading to the Evelpidon Military Academy, now blocked off – the artist acknowledges those parameters of historicity that attest to the multi- layered uniqueness of the shell. Confined within its walls, memories from the past emerge to the surface interrupting the status of its current silence. These are the multifaceted experiences of being, an ontological cycle transmuted into a tide that violently pervades the empty space. Charged with emotional power, they claim their own existence within present time. Christea’s work unfolds as a mental excavation of the past, simultaneously signifying the displacement of memory that is very often suspended, initiating a hint of discontinuity and uttering the loss of historical balance. The poetic idiosyncrasy of this installation implores the spectator to consider the implications of historical disruption, their gradual segregation from the past and, eventually, their reconciliation with their very own identity.