Untitled

The work brings together a collage of analogue photographs created in Serifos between
2019 and 2023, in dialogue with cyanotypes on ceramic tiles.
Through the photographic printing process of cyanotype, the work engages with memory
as an act of transfer, re-inscription, and material transformation. Archival images and documents from the late 1910s and early 1920s, relating to the island’s mine workers’ strikes,
are reactivated through a new material form, entering into dialogue with contemporary
photographic observations of the landscape. Rather than reconstructing history or positioning past and present in opposition, the work explores the continuity of memory and the
ways in which a place retains the traces of its histories. The present emerges as a layered
terrain, shaped by the sedimentation of human experience, much like ore embedded within
geological formations.
The work approaches Serifos as a palimpsest: a landscape in which geology, labour, and
collective memory are continuously inscribed upon one another. Through overlapping temporalities and material traces, the island becomes a space where histories remain embedded, transformed, and never fully erased.

The work consists of a composition of heterogeneous photographic and ceramic elements.
Digital prints derived from analogue photographs are integrated onto papers of varying textures and weights. The ceramic tiles, bisque-fired, bear cyanotype impressions of archival
photographic material and documents, becoming integrated elements within the overall
composition

TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION
ARTIST
Ioanna Spentzou_portrait

Ioanna Spentzou