It is Always Summer Somewhere

For many, a pause means summer, and summer means the sea. Calm water under a serene sky, in a range of blues in symmetry with the horizon, is the very image of relaxation. For others, however, the sea is a frontier, synonymous with danger and, potentially, death. This project, which was created on the Greek island of Lesbos in the summer of 2018, looks at this double symbolism of the sea.

For two months, Esmeralda Kosmatopoulos divided her days between the lazy summer holiday and her work in the Moria refugee camp, one of the detention points for those who arrive in Europe fleeing conflicts such as the war in Syria. Along with the vision of the horizon, the work –made up of 31 photographs, one for each day in July or August, edited with white blocks to hide the pleasure boats– refers to the image of vacations in the calendar and to the mental emptiness that accompanies them, while delving into the mythologies of exile, contemporary and past. Kosmatopoulos links the current migration policy of the EU with what happened in 1923, when a million Greek refugees arrived on Lesbos persecuted by the Ottoman Empire, and she invites us to go beyond the stillness of her images and see in them, rather, a tense calm. This is a warning against giving the sea an unequivocal meaning and a reminder that the tranquillity of the summer is also a privilege.

Esmeralda Kosmatopoulos was born in 1981 in Greece and was raised in Paris and she currently lives between Cairo and New York. She is a multidisciplinary conceptual artist working on language and identity. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and institutions around the world including the Times Art Museum (Beijing), La Panacée (Montpellier), Gallerie delle Prigioni – Luciano Benetton Collections (Treviso), Somerset House (London), Musée Zadkine (Paris), Kunsthal Charlottenborg (Copenhagen), Künstlerhaus Wien (Vienna), Kunsthal Aarhus (Aarhus), Palazzo delle Arti Napoli (Naples), AMA | Art Museum of the Americas (Washington), French Institute of Athens (Athens), CICA Museum (Gimpo), among others. Esmeralda has also worked with institutions and socially-charged entities such as the OAS (Washington), the Kayani Foundation (Beirut), Unicef Blue Dot (Athens), One Happy Family (Lesbos) or the Louis Braille Museum (Coupvray) creating large-scale installations that contribute to raising awareness of social issues.

INDOOR INSTALLATION

16 – ESMERALDA KOSMATOPOULOS
It is Always Summer Somewhere 

VENUE: Romo Kultur Etxea
ADDRESS: Santa Eugenia, Romo