Andreas Lolis, Malvina Panagiotidi, Georgia Sagri, Socratis Socratous
DEO projects

DEO in collaboration with the community of the medieval settlement of Vessa presents My Dreams Were Dashed Against Your Walls, its first public art exhibition curated by Akis Kokkinos, Founder of DEO Projects.

Eight international artists present new, site-specific, large-scale installations as well as existing artworks, transforming the entire village of Vessa into a contemporary art experience. In these volatile times of global uncertainty, the village of Vessa offers space for a transformative stroll of introspection and redefinition. The winding paths of the settlement, the half-ruined walls and the scenes of everyday life in the stone-built, dead-end streets bear witness to the passage of time, loss and the cyclical patterns of regeneration.

The participating artists share their personal experiences, inviting us to reflect on our human condition. They juxtapose their diverse visual voices with the echoes of the village’s medieval architecture and atmosphere, to present a multimedia poetic narrative in a labyrinthine form. In the alleys of Vessa, some artworks tell powerful stories of unfulfilled love, lost childhood, and abandonment; others, hidden from plain sight, appear momentarily to offer hope, redirecting us to what is vital, and allowing us to breathe.

My Dreams Were Dashed Against Your Walls explores the space between movement and inertia, silence and noise, the “inside” and the “outside”, listening to areas where time itself stands still. The artists draw a parallel between the stillness of the village and the numbness that often accompanies unresolved trauma, walking side by side with the visitor along paths of healing.

The exhibition also includes a new commissioned video work by the Oral History Group of Chios, featuring testimonies from current residents of Vessa: a living archive of the social fabric of the settlement, sharing stories of faded, shattered or realised dreams.

My Dreams Were Dashed Against Your Walls is a peripatetic journey that asks us to look within ourselves and at the world we inhabit. Reflecting the pathologies of the global, Vessa stands as a reference to the resilient spirit of communities around the world and their dreams of forging new paths.

An extensive public programme of talks, workshops, trekking, guided tours, and educational activities will complement the exhibition throughout its duration.

Participating artists:

Ahmet Doğu Ipek, Andreas Lolis, Francis Offman, Malvina Panagiotidi, Georgia Sagri, Socratis Socratous, Hale Tenger, Antrea Tzourovits

Text from deoprojects.com