VOTIVE
This works emerge from a profound personal inquiry into the relationship between body and soul, the divine and the human, pain and hope. Through the enduring symbol of votive offerings (*tamata*)—embodying humanity's need for divine intervention—I seek to investigate how the afflicted body pursues healing and connection with the transcendent.
Votive offerings—from ancient Greek sacrificial practices and fruit offerings to the dedication of sacred objects, persisting to this day—constitute a code that encrypts human suffering and the longing for cure, while simultaneously functioning as a unique form of communication with the Divine: a language of negotiation with the supernatural. Each silver object carries the psychic inscription of a narrative, an expectation, a human fragility transformed into faith. These votive offerings transcend mere folk art, revealing themselves as profound psychosomatic expressions that expose humanity's fundamental need for healing, wholeness, and metaphysical connection. They are the material manifestation of an invisible conversation, a dialogue traversing centuries that binds the suffering body to the search for meaning.
In an epoch where the body is frequently commodified as machine or consumer object, this exhibition invites the viewer to rediscover the sanctity of human vulnerability and the transformative power inherent in its acceptance—to confront our mortality by gazing directly into both faces of Janus.
Note:
In Greek, 'tama' refers to the votive offering made to a church when a
wish comes true. The small plaques are a public expression of gratitude
for a merciful event in a critical situation. They are usually small
metal plates with an embossed motif symbolising the theme of the
fulfilled wish. In Greek Orthodox churches, many icons are adorned with
them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Votive_offering
Works
The Chest of Memory (Thorax)
This chest of iron and bronze, filled with antique silver votive offerings, metamorphoses into a reliquary of human narratives, a vessel of collective prayer, memory, and hope. Each silver *tama* becomes a sealed message, a soul bearing a distinct story yet unified in its plea, seeking healing, protection, seeking the miraculous.
53cm×42cm×31cm, iron, brake pad, bronze sheet, silver and gold votive offerings.
Supplicants I
In these painterly compositions, human figures reveal their incompleteness, with portions of their bodies substituted by silver votive offerings. Their forms embody the condition of the suffering body—one experiencing decay while simultaneously pursuing wholeness through the Divine. The dark palette establishes a liminal space of dream and imagination, where the Real encounters the Imaginary.
Supplicants I :195 cm×195 cm, canvas, silver votive offerings. Supplicants II :195 cm×100 cm, canvas, silver votive offerings.
Supplicants II
The All-Seeing One (Panoptis)
This
monumental eye, crafted from papier-mâché as a replica of a traditional
votive offering and surfaced with silver leaf, presides over a
nocturnal landscape of uncertainty. Enlarged to architectural
proportions, it articulates human anguish—an omniscient eye that records
pain, surveils the human quest, and bears witness to the transmutation
from corporeal suffering to spiritual transcendence. The work is sealed
with liquid glass, creating a mirror wherein the viewer becomes both the
seeking gaze and encounters the protective gaze that watches over them.
195 cm×145 cm, canvas, papier-mâché, silver leaf, liquid glass.
Votive I
These votive offerings—infant, girl, boy, soldier—are hand-embroidered on medical gauze using the most elementary stitch. Gauze, a material intrinsic to trauma, healing, and protection, transforms into a canvas where needle and thread inscribe life narratives. Each stitch constitutes an act of care, a therapeutic repetition that echoes the rhythm of prayer.
Votive I 100 cm×160 cm, gauze, threads.
