Serapis Maritime | Liquid Grounds

Art Exhibition

The exhibition Liquid Grounds brings together testimonies, photographic material and objects from the maritime collection of Lagkada with contemporary artworks by the hybrid collective Serapis Maritime. Serapis Maritime, after conducting on-site research in Chios and in communication with the cultural association of Lagkada “Kydianda”, created new works especially for this exhibition. As the existing institutional and museological structures exclude the presence of Lagkada from the dominant maritime narrative of Chios, the exhibition seeks to incorporate an expanded, polyphonic and inclusive presentation of the community of Lagkada into the collective memory.

Paintings on wood made by the technique of Byzantine hagiography, highlighting details of nets’ rigging and tears, are presented on the walls of the museum, among its exhibits; while eroded, tangled nets, trawled in various parts of the Aegean Sea, are intertwined, hugging the floor. The worn-out, useless fishing nets of the fishermen emerge as intellectual material of great value, narrating a maritime history. The narration of the route of a travelled material that has been put out of use, remaining unseen in the depths of the sea, is consistent with the unseen maritime history of the village Lagkada and suggests a new state of visibility, a transfer to a new place and time, to add its own narrative to the palimpsest of the island and to become once again an object of human experience.

Serapis Maritime

Serapis Maritime is a hybrid artistic entity operating in the fields of art and fashion that creates works inspired by the aura of the ocean and the industries related to the sea.  It aims to expand the boundaries of artistic production and distribution, and its work functions as an extended novel: an anthropocentric narrative set in the universe of seafaring, with a strong spirituality in its images and references –an exercise in revealing what usually remains hidden.  The artistic production of Serapis Maritime can be read as a contemporary seascape.

Its exhibitions include the following: All as One at Arch, Athens (2019), Liquid Soul, at Rodeo, Athens (2019), SECCMA Trust, at St. Catherine, Paris (2019), Hands on your Soul at 13 rue d’Ormesson, Paris (2018), By his Wounds You will Be Healed at Cité des Arts, Paris (2017). The garments and houseware of Serapis Maritime are distributed internationally both in shops and in museums and galleries, including the Benaki Museum and the CAN and Dio Horia galleries in Athens, and the Belvedere Gallery in Vienna.

Eleni Boumpari

The co-curator of the exhibition at the “Seamanship of Lagkada” Cultural Space, grew up in Chios. She is an architect with postgraduate degrees in Social Anthropology and Museology. In 2009 she opened her own architectural studio and since 2012 she has been collaborating with municipalities and organisations in museum design. In 2019, she started collaborating with  the cultural association of Lagkada “Kydianda” for the collection of material for the Cultural Space “Seamanship of Lagkada” in the port of Lagkada. She has curated, among others, the permanent exhibitions of the museum “D. G. Kaslas” in Pouri village, Pelion, of the museum “DRAKEIA, 18.12.1943” in Drakeia village, Pelion, of the Folkloric Museum of Kefalari, Argolis, as well as the temporary exhibition “Volos - Nea Ionia, so far away - so close” of the museum of the city of Volos.

ABOUT DEO PROJECTS

DEO Projects is an alter-institution based in Chios. It explores institutionality as a living polymorph in constant flux Its programme is developed in cyclical timescales through interventions that take the form of commissions, exhibitions or artistic residencies.

Based on the values of empathy, trust and generosity, DEO Projects is committed to encouraging transnational dialogue and supporting the island’s existing cultural infrastructure. As a spaceless cultural entity, the organisation operates across the island, in collaboration with local museums and associations, non-institutional spaces and the public realm. Research thematics emerge from the multi-layered historical, social and cultural roots of the island and extend beyond its geographical boundaries, through stories which are travelling by sea.

DEO projects aims to create a fertile and inclusive space to radically re-examine symptoms of the past, long-lasting wounds, patterns of stereotypical thinking, and to deconstruct ideologies and connotations. By cultivating an interdisciplinary ethos through multiple types of knowledge, somatic experiences and local wisdom, DEO offers a space to marginalised voices and a voice to places that have been silenced. DEO Projects aspires to be a platform for dialogue that invites international and local artists, curators, thinkers, patrons, along with ecologists, healers, scientists, craftspeople, visitors, journalists and viewers to collectively explore versions of cultural, social and political change.

More information about DEO Projects: www.deoprojects.com

Free admission to all projects

DEO Projects and its creative programme of 2022, is financially supported by its circle of donors (Stamos Fafalios, Theodoros Fatsis and Maria Apodiakou, Maria Kalomenidou and Yannis Skoufalos), as well as the additional support of the 2022 guest patrons (Tonya and Ato Wright).

The creative programme of 2022 is curated by the director and founder of DEO Projects, Akis Kokkinos