ARTWORKS
Delta collaborates with ARTWORKS for the third consecutive year and presents works of Greek artists in the restaurant’s venue. The restaurant embraces art and organically integrates yearly rotating artworks in its interior and its surrounding spaces.
Following the concept of sustainability, we are invited to think of art as part of diverse ecosystems and interdependent interactions. The artists presenting their work at Delta Restaurant are awardees of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Artist Fellowship Program by ARTWORKS.
Chrysanthi Koumianaki, Blue Dots, 2018
Chrysanthi Koumianaki’s artistic practice delves into the impact of signage and signs, drawing inspiration from the diverse “tools” integrated into the urban fabric to optimize behavior within bustling urban environments. Athens, a city brimming with seemingly unremarkable metal bars lining its streets—some bearing the marks of vandalism, while others remain steadfastly functional—becomes a canvas for shaping our physical experiences and proposing a fluid, timeless vocabulary.
In the work Blue Dots, the signs establish conventions that effortlessly bridge the realms of private and public spaces, merging different elements together.
Reminiscent of the digital realm, the presence of a blue dot serves as a visual cue frequently employed in user interfaces and maps, effectively drawing attention to specific locations or points of interest.
Moreover, the soothing associations of blue with calmness and tranquility infuse the artwork with a serene ambiance, not always expected in the public space. The sculptures themselves can be interpreted as a form of contorted signs, further adding to the multifaceted nature of the piece.
Through the utilization of geometric shapes, Koumianaki presents a captivating fictional symbolic system, giving rise to a shared vocabulary that transcends the conventional language.
Courtesy of the artist
SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2018
Lydia Miligkou, How to dive if you are afraid of the Whale, 2019
Lydia Miligκou’s How to dive if you are afraid of the Whale is a series of ceramic works that simulate the texture of wet swimsuits with the ripples, suggesting recent emergence from water as if patiently drying before their next use.
The swimsuits’ wetness invokes all those sea bottoms that, like a swimsuit, seal the body, eventually making it disappear and leaving only its absence.
This evokes a sense of fear, activated by the watery context. In Béla Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies, the whale signifies the unknown threat of an impending disaster that disrupts the serenity of the town where the film takes place.
The massive, lifeless body of the whale appears harmless and still, but ultimately inspires action due to the fear it can generate. In the face of a slow cancellation of the future, between anticipation and action, a post-apocalyptic event unfolds: the magnificent body (of the Whale) may decay, decompose.
The unseen whale elicits emotional responses and provokes contemplation about the fragility of existence and the uncertainty it provokes. The works transcend mere representation and are transformed into embodiments of sublime power.
Courtesy of the artist
SΝF ARTWORKS Fellow 2021
Irini Bachlitzanaki, Mosaic, 2018-2021
Mosaic is part of a body of work that draws on the concepts of artifacts and decoration that uses objects and motifs derived from the domestic environment.
It features a part of the floor of the artist’s apartment in Athens embroidered on canvas.
Despite the fact that it comes from this particular house, it could refer to any apartment.
The depiction transcends personal memory and becomes a reference point of Athenian architecture from previous decades. While this particular type of floor got gradually disfavored, in recent years and with the rise of digital tourism, it has been revived.
The artist refers to occupations related to artistic practices, and especially those that have not found their place in the narrow canon of art history, underlining the complex relations of dwelling, appropriation and revival.
Courtesy of the artist
SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2022
Sofia Stevi, Urania is also a star, 2017
The paintings of Sofia Stevi interpret reality in a fluid world, in a universe where the dreamlike is an integral part of everyday life, where bodies float, space and time merge and the contingent becomes permanent.
Urania is also a star is made with gouache on raw cotton fabric. Stevi often selects fabric and other textile materials over canvas, making good use of their textures, and highlighting how easy they are to access since they are part of her everyday life.
The work takes as its starting point the mythological manifestations of astronomy that determine the names of the celestial bodies.
Stevi’s dire painting gestures, as well as her color palette, manage to capture in a single form the soft contours of the body, constellations, plant elements such as leaves and fruits.
The individual constituents -charged with symbols and signs- are attributed with expressiveness and playfulness.
Sensuality is associated with dreams, while the boundaries between reality and the imaginary, representation and abstraction seem blurred.
Courtesy of the artistand The Breeder, Athens
SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2022
Despina Flessa, Crossing Nile, 2022
Despina Flessa examines the characteristics and properties of materials, focusing on their various textures, but also on the interaction between their surfaces and the architecture of the space.
The notion of transformation is essential to her creative process; two-dimensional materials transform and expand in space.
In Crossing Nile, thin layers of wood veneer take the shape of a boat made of papyrus.
The artist turns to historical and mythological references of the Mediterranean and Egypt, and to solar barques that symbolize transportation from the terrestrial to the transcendent.
She creates vertical forms that lean against the wall -like “resting boats”- whose traces on their surface witness the routes that have been carved on them.
The anthropomorphic clay objects, placed at the bottom of the installation, have been coated with graphite and evoke figurines of eerie forms.
Courtesy of the artist and Zoumboulakis Galleries
SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2018