In a nutshell, the Dark Ages, which followed the decline of the Roman Empire, was a period defined by economic and social instability and mass migration. The definition could easily apply to today. Judging by recent world events, it is clear that the twenty-first century is not entirely stable. Rather than being carved in stone or marble, contemporary reality is one defined by online information databases that could disappear at the flick of a switch, where borders have become nothing more than a mere formality, and warfare is waged in the name of populations that might not have agreed to such action in the first place. In these troubled times humanity has taken a backseat, something that concerns artist Kalliopi Lemos.
We meet at the New Benaki Museum, where her latest trilogy Navigating in the Dark commenced in January and will continue at Rethymno, Crete, from May 6 to August 27, culminating at the Crypt of St. Pancras Church in London, from October 1 to November 30. “There is no trust between people and no trust in the systems that define our societies; hence comes the idea that we are all navigating in the dark,” Lemos observes. “Darkness is the age we are going through; the loss of trust, the loss of confidence, and the loss of feeling. My suggestion is get inside yourself and find humility and understanding to understand the person opposite you.”
Lemos is an artist firmly rooted in the narrative of human history. Her work is often described as investigations into spiritual and physical migrations. Having lived outside Greece for forty years with a base in London, she has a cultural affinity with Japan, where she was introduced to Ikebana, Japanese flower arrangement, which she has studied for some fifteen years. With an international background, Lemos clearly connects to the world on a universal level that goes beyond nations and borders. “I feel that what I need to say about a subject sometimes needs to be expressed in different places of the world in order to give different viewpoints and different nuances,” she admits.
Navigating in the Dark follows a previous trilogy from 2006 to 2009, that started in Eleusis, traveled to Istanbul, and ended in Berlin, a location as symbolic as the works exhibited. Focusing on the politics of forced migration, the sculptural installations in all three locations were made of boats Lemos had found washed up on the coast of her birthplace Chios since 2003 and which had been used by migrants crossing the sea from Turkey into Greece. The trilogy was a comment on a humanitarian crisis that remains an issue not fully acknowledged from the standpoint of the European Union despite the alarming statistic that ninety per cent of all detected illegal border crossings into the European Union come through Greece.
As such, while the locations of Istanbul and Athens illustrated the problem, the choice of Berlin as the conclusion to this trilogy expressed a need to recognize immigration as a collective responsibility that might result in a viable solution. “The final sculpture was erected in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in order to acknowledge that there is also the rest of the world to think about,” Lemos says. “The immigration problem has escalated and Europe has had the attitude that they will close the door but it doesn’t work… We cannot close our eyes when the boats bring people across–how can we?”
This overt political intention has been subdued in her current show, as Lemos turns her attentions to the personal, although in its introspection, there is a political dimension. Looking at the New Benaki Museum installation featuring a wooden platform upon which four separate sculptures surround a central hexagonal beehive-like pond containing steel faces and volcanic rocks emerging from the dark water, the use of symbolism in form and material demands contemplation. On using volcanic rock Lemos explains: “I chose it firstly from the color since it matches the rust of the steel but also because it comes from the centre of the earth. It is like bringing out what is inside and inviting the viewer to meditate on that.”
From a composition of twelve rings with twelve turquoise-colored, bronze, winged phalluses, a seed with a stalk pushing triumphantly into the light, a flaccid, worm slit open to reveal the rust within it, to a tepee-like womb prised apart to reveal a dynamic core. “I chose the materials for their earthy qualities and not their industrial qualities. I haven’t used stainless steel or hard steel–I am using mild steel. Although it is a tough material in terms of hardness, as soon as it hits the air it starts rusting.” Pointing to the worm-like sculpture she shows how the interior has been left exposed to the elements. “It expresses humanity and fragility to show that something that looks strong is also fragile... [the sculptures] are aging as we are in life.” Indeed, regardless of class, color and creed, fragility connects us all.
But that doesn’t mean fragility is a weakness. In part two of Navigating in the Dark, Lemos presents an installation in the seventeenth century Mosque of Ibrahim Khan in Rethymno, Crete, once a Venetian fortress church. The central sculpture comprises of three papier-mâché goddesses with bodily protrusions displayed inside a steel and Perspex egg with slits that, should you look through them, reveal the goddesses reflected and multiplied. On one side of the egg are seven white, plaster boats Lemos calls Blade Boats placed horizontally, and seven black, wooden boats standing upright on the opposite side, which Lemos describes as souls full of secrets who connect the earth with the sky. Completing the composition is a tree trunk carved into the shape of driftwood behind the egg, upon which twelve human heads made of salt are presented.
Symbolically, the installation can be read in myriad ways. On salt, Lemos notes that “on the Greek islands, boats and salt are combined; it’s everyday life for us. Also in the Bible, Lot’s wife became a pillar of salt; salt is also purifying; it is also the remnants when everything evaporates. When you take those remnants and shape them into heads you symbolize the journey of life.” The use of salt harks back to the common fate of many of those who traveled in the boats Lemos uses in her work. Yet as Ariel sings of a king’s death in a sinking ship in Shakespeare’s Tempest; bones become coral, and eyes become pearls. In death, everything connects back to the earth, sea and sky. Perhaps this totality is the root of all spirituality, no matter what god we choose to connect it to.
The fact that Lemos calls the sculptures of salt heads “Odysseus’ Boat”  exposes another level to Navigating in the Dark that reveals an autobiographical element to the exhibition narrative. As Odysseus was sent into the darkness of the underworld to re-emerge into the light–a common theme in ancient epic - Lemos expresses her own experience as a traveler of the world. Describing London, she says “a lot of people complain about this grayness here, but I think you get used to it. Eventually I found it very useful as a way to get into myself and concentrate. The joy of the light when it comes out is amazing!” She laughs, explaining that the city was a place that offered her “a space to grow, enter myself and find all this wealth that I can now express with my work.”
Thus the fact that Navigating in the Dark was conceived in London, there is continuity in that it physically culminates in London, which Lemos likens to “the passage of sun god Amun-Ra when he rises from the east goes down in the west, under the earth.” In the vaulted, underground burial space of St. Pancras Church, Lemos will place three boats, all stripped of paint, and filled separately with snakes, human figures and crows made of steel. “I wanted to symbolize all three elements of the passage of life. The first boat is concerned with the wisdom of the earth and matter, the second is the middle zone of human beings walking on top of the earth, and the third are the crows that fly in the spiritual world, also thought of as mediators,” she explains. Nearby, a hive-like space will feature white paper sculptures of bees hovering in the air that symbolize souls in the non-material world. And thus ends the cycle.
Looking back at the primordial black pond at the Benaki Museum, to the salt faces of Rethymno, and the paper bees in the London crypt, the cycles expressed in Navigating in the Dark act as powerful reminders that life is an individual journey that plays out on a collective stage. “Inside we are all the same, but we have been raised and conditioned by different places that we have lived in our lives,” Lemos muses. “But deep down I believe in the collective conscious; inside we are all great: nobody is lesser or greater, nobody is richer or poorer; we are all the same–this is the beauty of life.” Indeed, as Nikos Kazantzakis once wrote, we emerge from the abyss and we end in the abyss and we call the luminous interval life. Perhaps if we recognized the light within ourselves and responded to it in kind, the world would be a much brighter place. At the same time, if we also recognized that an end is also a beginning, we might find the capacity to cultivate a brighter future.