The Migrant’s Ark, an architectural landscape at the level of the viewer’s visual horizon, emerges in space and appears in the light in direct dependence on its own shadows, scale and dimensions. In the ambiguity of the moment in time (dawn or dusk?) it is perceived by the senses by means of a “shadow theatre” that projects it in space, in collaboration with the diffused scent of remembrance and sweet nostalgia, the sounds of electronic music and whispered poems in a new idiomatic language. The Ark captures the gaze. The projective slope of the two sections and the light that falls on them create shadows of different depths and sizes in three-dimensional space, while the total effect of the shadows brings faintly to mind the vague archetypal shape of a traditional Chinese pagoda and its strong reflection.
 
The windows of the pagoda, which once hosted familiar images, are now blank openings whose form retains traces of uprooting. They look like scars of memory, like Chinese ideograms that project their shadows onto the wall and thus reappear, as happens when film negatives are developed. The dreamlike, ideal world that appears to be dispersed in space uses as a thematic point of departure the age-old cultural baggage that Chinese migrants bring with them when they travel to places other than their country of origin. At the same time, common cultural elements assimilated by different cultures are emphasised indirectly. A characteristic example is the shadow theatre, a tradition in the East that was imported into Greece long ago and has become an integral part of the Greek cultural tradition. The pagoda and its reflection float on the horizon before the viewers’ eyes, leaving shadows moving to and fro quietly and unobtrusively, creating another shadow theatre. But here, the leading role is not played by the familiar traditional Greek figure of Karagiozis, but by the unknown and unfamiliar emigrant who walks on the city streets as inconspicuously as a shadow.

A fellow traveller in this memory voyage of Word and Image is Vassilis Kokkas’ electroacoustic music that the work emits, structuring the environment with the architecture of sound, alluding to a mysterious place that carries sounds of primeval memory and overseas journeys. Also contributing to this feeling are the fragrances of biologist Orestes Davias, who uses mixtures chiefly of myrrh and mastic which, according to the therapeutic methods of the East, revitalise the spirit and enhance the energy reserves within us. The whispered poetic words of Panos Bosnakis, taken from his series of poems on the theme of migration entitled Emigraphs, create a new dialect based on the corruption and recombination of the English language, the main lingua franca of modern communication, while still remaining open to influences from other linguistic cultures.
 
On the walls flanking the work, words are written in low relief in this new but somehow familiar poetic language, nurturing our hope that perhaps sometime the barrier of linguistic communication will be abolished. The sounds of music converse with the new words and emphasise the musicality of this hybrid language. Poetic words are created constantly and explore the assimilative, re-creative power of language and its ability to become something new, perhaps implying that it is created within a ceaselessly changing daily environment.
 
If the Migrant’s Ark activates the viewer’s imagination by supplying his mind with associations of ideas, then the second part, Heart of Dark “obliges” him to take an active part in the current social landscape and to become aware that he is part of a multicultural whole. Human figures, outlined in life size, are standing on a sidewalk in downtown Athens, although it could just as well be any other modern megalopolis. Their portraits in reflecting sheets of stainless steel have dents, rips and scars so that by means of light and reflections they are projected like shadows in space, where they meet the viewers’ physical presence.
 
The particular, existing persons of different nationality and origin that are reproduced, although giving the impression that they have been rendered with comparative uniformity, retain some special features of their personality. Familiar and unfamiliar, ordinary people in our multicultural daily life comprise a contemporary mural, and on their journey they shape and influence the constantly changing landscape of the modern city; we in our haste do not notice them, nor do we know who they are or what their daily lives are like.
 
Their portraits repeat with some accuracy the movements of the militia company in the famous Rembrandt painting Night Watch. Up until fairly recently we knew neither the names nor the activities of the militia members who played an important role in the city of Amsterdam, having been appointed to safeguard the city’s freedom and prosperity, even though they were not allowed to take any part in the decision-making process. Research in the city’s historic archives brought to light the names and activities of all these unknown – now known – people who had played a decisive role in the daily life of the city . In the wink of an eye, the active but invisible citizens of another age become the mirror of the present.
 
Viewers are included in the Heart of Dark, owing to the reflective properties of the steel sheet that functions as both mirror and inflector, and are seen simultaneously in the cold, hard multi-figured mural of a big city today. Through an on-going two-way relationship, like reflections that have not yet met in the mirror, the shadows determine the otherness of a particular moment in a particular place. At the same time, the mirror-inflectors become passageways that permit entrance to another dimension and another reality, one which invites us to become acquainted with it and to speculate about its limits.
 
But the real protagonist remains the viewer, who becomes part of the work because his movements change his reflection and his place in the composition. The viewer depicts and is depicted by his distorted image; he sees his own “foreign” reflection among figures that are foreign to him. Through this mirroring, the existence of the “other” is immediately perceived, while at the same time an unexpected opportunity is provided to transcend the ego, as subject becomes object and the viewer becomes the viewed.
 
In essence, Harris Kondosphyris utilises real phenomena of Greek life, such as the increasing number of Chinese migrants who co-exist quietly with the rest of the population, in order to make an ironic comment on the stereotyped Western images of other civilisations that differ from its own. The routine story of a migrant living in a new place is reminiscent of the myth of Dido who, self-exiled in Africa with her demands limited to the minimum, achieved the maximum, winning her own place in a foreign land. By wandering and searching in much the same way, modern artists are called upon to convey their contraband images, creating common meeting points for all of us strangers, different and similar, who remain foreigners and emigrants since our cultural identities, our superstitions and our viewpoints are always part of our baggage.
 
In the intensely multicultural societies of the 21st century, the issue of co-existence with the “foreigner” occupies a primary position. It is a challenge that transcends geographic origin and cultural identity, since the acceptance of diversity and the understanding of otherness can be accomplished only through the recognition that each of us is a foreigner within himself or herself. In this context, in which there is an urgent need to find other means of perceiving and understanding the world around us in which we take part, the need for synaesthesia in art seems more timely than ever before. In his work Athens-Beijing Harris Kondosphyris and his fellow voyagers remind us that art becomes, or can become, a synergic way of experiencing a different reality by opening passageways so that we are not content with superficial reflections, but may perhaps have an opportunity, like Alice, to enter other realities through the looking-glass.
 
Irini Savvani
Art Historian and Critic

A. Th. Van Deursen, “Rembrandt and his age: The life of an Amsterdam burgher,” Rembrandt The Master and his Workshop/ Paintings, Yale University Press, 1991, pp. 46-47.