"The die’s cast"
Two disparate stories from mythology and the modern history of the island are intertwined in a new story that becomes small sculptures, playing between the serious, the comic, the tragic.
Mythology wants, after Perseus’ request to Zeus, that the island’s frogs hum to rest. Thus in antiquity the silent “Serifian” frog became pejoratively the voiceless man.
The modern history of Serifos proves that the voiceless, undervalued workers of Serifos who worked in the island’s mines, decided to speak out about the inhumane working conditions.
“The die’s cast” for some to take back their voice, and for others to claim, to rebel, to win after bloody conflicts an agreement for eight-hour employment.
- Sculptural composition
- High temperature Stoneware clay
- Underglaze made by soil from Avessalos beach
- Lightly glazed at 1230C
- Technique: Coiling
- Composition Dimensions 60 cm X 60 cm X 23 cm
Dimitra Stavrou
Dimitra Stavrou
Dimitra Stavrou was born in Ioannina, she studied at the University of Patras and currently works as a civil engineer in Ioannina. She also runs her own ceramic workshops and showroom called "Tiles/ceramics and plinths" where she conducts pottery lessons. Her love for ceramic arts began in 2002 and thereafter she became a member of The Pictoral Chamber Of Greece. She has since taken part in several group exhibits and was awarded, in 2016, with second place in the 54th National Hellenic contest of ceramics. She has created the group "Συν...Τεχνίτες πηλού" In cooperation with the Ministry of Culture she organizes and oversees ceramic exhibits in Ioannina.
She herself, in reference to her work, writes: 'My relationship with ceramics is "chemistry", as demanding and unpredictable as love itself. Moments of creativity, pleasure, anxiety, failed attempts, experiences, satisfaction, failure and insistence interchange and make their own cycle parallel to the cycle of life. Through experimentation, paradoxical trials, sometimes unorthodox solutions, constant searching for form, technique, materials and due to the changing conditions that occur every time in the furnace and in the method of baking, the art work that is created is unique and not always predictable.'