There is something both comforting and itchy when it comes to the term “residing.” The word allows for multiple interpretations: from settling in, lingering and remaining in one place to moving, unhinging, and disrupting the bountiful quotidian in order to journey toward a new, alternative, less used, or less decayed current—toward a more inclusive reality that occasionally eludes the standardized view of the world around us as human beings.

journeying towards that which is missed is a group show that looks at the idea of residing, in both literal and allegorical terms. Literally, because the participating artists come together in the context of an artist residency; whilst physically dislodged from their bases, they get to find new ways of existing, interacting with and reflecting on their multilayered surroundings. Allegorically, because the works produced over the time period of the residency, may, in their exposition, appear static or willing to be looked at as configured objects, yet they willfully crave to be otherwise changed, to never let their constant mutations down. The works’ current place of residence, is somewhere to rest, to grow, and to be thought of. This position is an axis that can help alter the gaze of the personal and the psychosocial qualities that are embedded in both what can be fully grasped and what escapes us.

Othonas Charalambous’ work operates as a transcription of the disruptions caused in marine life by the invasions of outside sound—affecting the existence, navigations, mating, and ultimately the survival of species living underwater. imperceptibilities (2022), is an attempt at a non-anthropocentric understanding of a residency that doesn’t belong to humans; it asks how we could speak, protect, listen, or even touch a space without claiming ownership over it.

Chloe Karnezi’s practice engages with the residual afterlives of objects, spaces, and human and non-human species through the use of 3D-scanning technologies. Her work, fthorá (2022), operates as an attempt—and a self-aware failure—to immortalize matter that is already far along the path of disintegration, using tools that she refers to as “inadequate.” What was once conceived of as dismissed, worn out, or torn apart gets to have another life—another residency—which is not only tangible, but also exists in memory. Without mystifying the fractured nature of things, or denying the implications of the linearity of time on something’s physicality, her work, both through its form and research, asks the question: is the elusive nature of sentimental objects the very root or the very essence of nostalgia?

Fionnuala McGowan’s work develops from a starting point that researches the wounds of a city; marks that time, weather, or the human hand create on buildings’ walls and streets; and signs that would otherwise remain unnoticed. McGowan preserves and intervenes in these spaces in both analog and digital ways. By creating an imaginary archive that arises from memory, but ends up resembling the flesh and bones of a city context, McGowan’s work interventions (2022), aims to create an unorthodox portal through which one can engage with the city .

In one of her poems Etel Adnan writes:

“...I managed to forget that you
were perishable   now
the storm is happening in an
underground world   I had reached
the end of my life   I asked you
to believe it...”

Her words, the ways they expand upon discourses of memory, perishability, underground worlds, endings, and faith as means to build other haptic and imaginary residencies are what journeying towards that which is missed longs for in its fabrication.

Ioanna Gerakidi

Graphic Design: Katerina Kazou

This year’s residency program is under the auspices of the City of Athens