Flying Too Close To The Sun

Excavating and unearthing unexpected narratives, occurrences and momentous events the artists highlight the entanglements between geographies of proximity and point to the material and psychological memory of unstable or contested spaces and territories. Their work explores the way longing or trauma manifests itself through objects and activates mechanisms of memory, by calling forth experiences of war, displacement, exodus and migration and the parallel histories that emerge because of them.

Hera Büyüktaşcıyan was born in Istanbul and comes from a multicultural background with Greek, Armenian and Turkish roots. In her multidisciplinary practice, Büyüktaşcıyan looks back on tumultuous histories rooted in territorial disputes, displaced populations, and ruptures often centering on the history of the broader geopolitical region of the former Ottoman Empire. In her sculptural installations, in-situ interventions, drawings, and films one often encounters archival or architectural elements that bear within them traces of extinction in order to revoke memory and allow the past to be rewritten.

Maria Tsagkari was born in Piraeus, Greece with family ties to Asia Minor and Samos. Drawing inspiration from personal and collective archives, historical sources, literary and cinematic references, Tsagkari attempts to retrieve silenced stories that challenge monolithic historical narratives and representation. In this context, themes such as displacement, loss, faith, dream and love are being incorporated, often revealing an internal struggle between impulse and social, political and historical ties.

Following a residency in Samos, both artists will create new works for the exhibition which will be shown alongside existing works.

*The exhibition borrows its title from Maria Tsagkari’s work with the same title, which makes reference to theGreek myth of Icarus, who fell into the sea and drowned after flying too close to the sun on wings made of wax after defying his father’s advice. The exhibition interprets the myth of Icarus in metaphorical terms. i.e. that the recklessness and defiance of limitations could be in a sense applied to the Eastern Mediterranean region’s history and present.

In the first part of the programme, students are introduced to the meanings behind the exhibition and the works, and are invited to share their own stories based on family memories, objects, or homes that no longer exist. Heritage is explored not as a material state, but as a lived experience that leaves traces and emotions. Themes such as writing as a landscape, the origins of musical traditions like rebetiko and the people who created it, the concept of faith, the body, stone, skin, and sacredness form the foundation of the programme.

Students are invited to form their own words and phrases using wooden alphabet letters provided to them, creating a "collective choreography" that acts as a solid structure upon which memory, emotion, and oral or written testimony can rest. After the words are formed, they are recorded and the process is photographed, followed by an audio rendering of the words.

CURATOR OF EDUCATION
Katerina Zacharopoulou