“In the Circle of Tsarouchis, Part 2”
At the exhibition of students and graduates of the Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA), which opened on Saturday, June 14, at the Yannis Tsarouchis Foundation under the title “In the Circle of Tsarouchis, Part 2,” you can find the work Made in Greece, a piece made of metal and magnets.
The metal figure of the Tsarouchian sailor is adorned with tourist souvenir magnets, small, inexpensive representations and symbols from places that have been laminated for the consumption of their visitors. These small magnetic souvenirs are an encoded and simplified means of transmitting a place’s tourist identity and act as a commentary on how identity is pasted on and commercialized. The sailor is transformed into a souvenir image substrate, into a tourist outline. His body becomes a reflective surface for a common fantasy, an experience packaged as a commercial product. Pairing the sailor figure, borrowed from the world of Giannis Tsarouchis, with tourist magnet souvenirs creates a contrast between poetry and commerce. The artwork refers to the distance between Tsarouchis’ personal, lyrical conception of “Greekness” and its everyday mass reproduction through easily recognisable, repetitive symbols.
Made in Greece, 2025
Metal and magnets