CHRYSSA NIKOLERI: THE NEXT SAFE PLACE

A home is a real place. Or maybe it is not. It exists as a necessity, but also as a wish; both as an illusion, and as a compulsion. Perspectives change depending on the prevailing actual conditions and each person’s imaginary, on our desire to come to terms with or negate reality. Many times the quest to find a safe place is connected to relocation, and relocation oſten proves a delusion. We seek safety in a home. But we are never guaranteed to attain it inside its four walls. Looking for safety can define the entire journey during which our home, or safe refuge, can be a tree, a wave, a sound. Our own selves can become a home. A home to us or others.

Chryssa Nikoleri sets out to narrate her own journey. Her starting point is a state of perfect internal harmony (our inside world is our first home), which is, however, interrupted along the way. In her quest to discover the ideal place, the artist travels the world, moving from capital cities and busy locations in the West to deserted squares and vast landscapes in Africa and Latin America. Nature proves the ultimate station, the most familiar environment she discovers before heading back to her ancestral home, the place she considers her genuine point of reference.

Shots defined by the variable speed of the gaze and of the gait a man has when seeking that old familiar place.

Curator: Zoi Chatzistavrou