Agia Marina (Saint Marina) (2016)
Single channel video, color, sound, 7΄
My family from my mother’s side comes from Mylassa, in Asia Minor, the modern day turkish town of Milas on the southern shore. My grandfather and grandmother left as refugees in ’22 and found themselves initially on Samos, then Rethymno and finally in Nikea where they were given land on which to build and raise their four daughters. Nikea is where I also was born and grew up until I left at 17 to study. After my parents’ death, I came back to the paternal home where I have been living for the past three years.
In one of the difficult but unavoidable excavations of family belongings, I discovered an old icon of St. Marina. I remembered that my mother had given it to me years earlier, probably at a period when the icons of saints rated last in my interests. I inherited it solely on account of my name, as a gift from the grandmother I never knew, Marina Yahaki, who wished the icon handed down to the next Marina in the family.
I knew nothing more that that, so I started asking her daughters who are still alive, my two ninety-year-old aunts, Dina and Xeni.
Exhibitions
– Nice! A poetic exploration about the possibility of return, of memory, homeland and loss, Cultural Center Manos Loizos, Athens, Greece (curated by Y. Grigoriadis and Y. Isidorou)
– A World Not Ours, Art Space Pythagorion, Samos, Greece (curated by K. Gregos)
See also: A World Not Ours catalogue text