Georges Salameh: Το ικρίωμα / Scaffolding (2023)

In 2023, I collaborated with Georges Salameh in Scaffolding, an open-air installation at the Theocharakis Foundation in Athens. Formalized as an ephemeral monument with the Acropolis in the background, Scaffolding was envisioned as a virtual and symbolic recollection of recurring patterns in the Lebanese-Greek artist’s personal history: the uprooting from Asia Minor his ancestors endured during the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922); and, later, of his own family from Beirut to Athens, in 1989, toward the end of the Lebanese Civil War.

A natural slab of Pentelikon marble sat on the scaffolding structure, with a color photograph embedded on its surface. Entitled Sweeper, the photograph was taken by the artist during the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics on a central avenue of the city. The photograph captured a landmark interwar housing block for refugees from Minor Asia, temporarily sheathed in a facade wrap depicting a view of the Sacred Rock of the Acropolis—a last-minute embellishment strategy to keep the crumbling building hidden from the public eye.

Conceived as an archaeological artifact rising from the depths of the earth and on the verge of its future musealization—and further insertion in the national myth—the exhibited artwork aimed to trigger connections with elements of the urban landscape framing it: among them, the Hellenic Parliament, the Parthenon, and the Attican mountain range of Hymettus, on whose densely inhabited slopes thousands of refugees were re-sheltered following the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey under the Treaty of Lausanne.

Performance (May 7, 2023) With Georges Salameh
The artist interacted with printed documents and audiovisual material from the Let Us Stop and Weep archive. It is a series of photos, videos, objects and texts, which, in the context of the archive’s life and creative configuration, have been constantly rearranged and edited. Through a range of thematic approaches, he explored, edited and shared new narratives with the audience.

“Scaffolding” fragility and re-negotiation