DEO is a non-profit arts operative promoting contemporary art on the lovely island of Chios, or Sakız Adası, as it is called in Turkish. Facing the breezy Çeşme Peninsula, it is famed for producing a legendary, health-giving commodity, mastic (sakız).
Founded in 2021, DEO is now into its fourth season. I went along earlier this month when the curator, Akis Kokkinos, a native of the island, was opening an open-air exhibition featuring eight International artists. Setting out to promote a spirit of friendship between Turkey and Greece, My Dreams Were Dashed Against Your Walls, Akis explained, is about 'exploring the space between movement and inertia, silence and noise, the inside and the outside, and listening when time stands still'.
The eight artists, commissioned by DEO to produce works in the lovely medieval village of Vessa, are Ahmet Doğu İpek, Andreas Lolis, Francis Offman, Malvina Panagiotidi, Georgia Sagri, Socratis Socratous, Hale Tenger, and Antrea Tzourovits.
Andreas Lolis, 11:27am. The are the times when Lolis first walked through the village. Both pieces are in marble.
Inviting us to see every stone, piece of wood, fabric or tree trunk as a piece of art, Andreas Lolis’s work plays with the relationship between time and timelessness, the element of surprise and the discovery of pieces in unexpected places.
Andreas Lolis in Vessa
Hale Tenger I’d rather open my heart than become comfortably numb, 2024
Mixed-media installation including sound. Ready-made tamata and unique handmade silver-plated brass tamata. Commissioned by DEO
Tenger's outdoor installation is both delicate and deep. She has placed tamatas, or ex-votos, along the walls of a roofless structure, from the inside of which come the sounds of happy children playing. Some tamata are traditional while others, specifically made for the exhibition, are in the forms of a bird, a fish, a tree, planet Earth, all simple 'representations of life untouched by human intervention'.
Georgia Sagri, Sitting with my Breath 2024. Blown glass, wood, iron.
Professor Georgia Sagri, an artist and a professor of Performance at Athens Conservatoire, has exhibited her work Internationally at the Guggenheim, Bilbao and MOMA, New York. In the courtyard
Situated on a bench in the courtyard of Vessa's Agioi Anargyroi church Sagri asks us to 'consider the delicate threads of our social fabric, urging a deeper awareness of the communal and reflective spaces we all inhabit'.
Antrea Tzourovits Legacy of little missteps, 2024 Old wooden military crate. Doomed objectives, 2024 2x seamed anti-climbing safety playground net, PVC fabric, iron. In the distance, Dropped noise, 2024 Ipe wood, faux leather, acrylic paint, varnish
Antrea Tzourovits (1987, Danilovgrad, Serbia and Montenegro) lives and works in London. Referring to memories from his childhood, AntreaTzourovits associates contrasting images of excitement and disappointment. After working as a manual labourer in Greece he studied for an MFA in Fine Art at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, won a scholarship from NEON, and has BA in Fine Art from the Athens School of Fine Arts, Greece (2015-2020).
Ahmet Doğu İpek Proposition for an alternative square, 2024 Τulle curtain, burnt tree parts, painted plywood.
Ahmet Doğu Ipek stands and playfully lies amid his burnt pieces from the island's devestated forests, displayed elegantly and dramatically as a stage set on the village's main square. He lives in Istanbul and his work is part of the permanent collections of Arter, Istanbul Modern and Odunpazari Modern Museum.
Socratis Socratous Untitled / What the sea can’t see (o Σταύρος της Ελένης)
2024 plaster, iron. Above, Socratis Socratous in Vessa.
Socratis Socratous was born in Paphos, Cyprus, and lives and works between Athens and Nicosia. 'His political conscience and commitment to the common good, as well as his attraction to the undefined beauty of life drive his work as a whole: a happy-sad mixture of light and darkness, hope and disillusionment, private and collective memory.' The title, What the Sea Can't See is the title for his pieces around Vessa.
Socratis Socratous Untitled / What the sea can’t see (o Σταύρος της Ελένης)
2024 iron
Akis Kokkinos is the founder and curator of DEO. After years of working for private collections, independent projects and major cultural institutions in the UK and Greece he started this splendid project on his native island Chios.
Kokkinos's 'curatorial practice is focused on ways to disrupt the objective and institutional by introducing or supporting other less appreciated and recognised forms of knowledge. Through multidisciplinary discourses, eco-feminist, non-western approaches, and other non-rational thoughts and philosophies, his practice focuses on the less spoken, invisible or liminal.
The exhibition runs from 6 July - 8 September.2024
https://deoprojects.com July 6th - September 8th Vessa, Chios, Greece
