In the cafe area of the National Archaeological Museum, from September 7 to October 5, 2024, the solo exhibition of Giorgos Kevrekidis entitled “Votives-signposts of an artistic path” will be hosted.

These usually improvised constructions that contain icons, censers and sometimes lit candles, known as roadside iconostasis and shrines, have attracted the engineer and visual artist Giorgos Kevrekidis since 2015. He traced in this subject the human factor that motivated their creation: a victim or victims of fatal car accidents that had cost lives, a member or members of their family or families, a designer or creator of the monuments, a relationship of constant painful presence. He has collected and still goes on locating a multitude of types, which, thanks to his own or his friends’ photographic lens, make up a unique corpus, a cultural testimony for the area and the time they were erected.

Following expeditions he has made himself, which are continued with a similar fervor by his circle of friends, and having studied the collected material, he proceeded to draw all kinds of commemorative structures, initiating, at the same time, their individual interpretation. The excitement of discovering new examples prompted him to particularly promote them. He even advanced from two-dimensional to three-dimensional depictions, integrating into certain of his ensembles details of their structure, as the so-called “alenovides” (a special type of screws), with the aim to demonstrate the stages of their formation. Images of painful memory, always moving, the iconostasis-shrines have been a subject of research, either treasured in photo albums in general, from all over Greece, or individually, by region, or in specific research projects.

The size, typology and materials of the iconostasis-shrines vary. They show multiple morphology and raw material provenance, depending on the region in which they have been erected: church models of specific architectural types (single-aisled, double-aisled, triple-aisled, domed with flat roof), cist-like and deposit box-like structures, of peculiar shape ones, made of stone, marble, iron, metal sheet, wood, plastic, which can also be combined – sometimes in an inventive way, sometimes in a completely quirky way.

In this particular exhibition, the works of Giorgos Kevrekidis bring together the starting points of his inspiration and their individual highlighting. The commemorative places of iconostasis-shrines urge the artist to ponder creatively, functioning as stimuli for key visual expression. (Dimitris Pavlopoulos Professor of Art History, National and Capodistrian University of Athens)

Entrance to the Cafe is free.
Exhibition opening: Saturday, September 7, 2024, 17:00 – 20:00
Exhibition duration: September 7 – October 5, 2024
Exhibition opening hours: Monday to Sunday: 8:00 – 19:00
Tuesday: 13:00 – 19:00
Organization – Editor: Emilia Kougia, tel. 6944417606
Address: National Archaeological Museum, 44 28th of October (Patesion), Athens 10682
Information: www.namuseum.gr