Notizie dal Padiglione Grecia

 

Loukia Alavanou, On The Way to Colonus, VR360, 2020, stills © Loukia Alavanou

In "Oedipus In Search Of Colonus", Greek artist Loukia Alavanou translates the plot of Sophocles' last, nearly 2,500-year-old drama "Oedipus in Colonus" into the present in the form of a 360-degree VR film. The artist asked members from a Roma community living in a shantytown just outside modern-day Athens, to act out the plot of the ancient drama in this VR film. At the end of his life, Oedipus, infamous for his cruel deeds and expelled from the city of Thebes, comes to Colonus to die. For the first time he wants to defy the will of the gods who have determined his whole tragic destiny. Against their resistance, he chooses Colonus, a sacred place dedicated to the gods, to die.

 Similarly, the Roma living today in the west of Athens, not far from the historical Colonus, revolt against their fate. For the often stateless nomads are denied the right to be buried in a cemetery near their last place of residence by the Greek authorities. A journey through time from Sophocles' two-and-a-half-thousand-year-old drama to the social ills of today, explicitly political and yet firmly anchored in the cultural history of the artists' homeland.

 The exhibition is curated by Heinz Peter Schwerfel, a specialist in the art of the moving image.