MOHA Research Centre presented the work Red of Loss: CMYK 0, 88, 88, 84, 68, an installation specially designed by Elli Chrysidou for the Meshjid of Imaret.
The installation is part of a trilogy of works by the artist on the theme of loss. A loss that in recent years, with the repeated crises that have shaped the contemporary reality, we have been experiencing in multiple ways, consciously or unconsciously, individually and collectively. This part of the trilogy refers to the loss of community.
The archetypal group of Christ and his Disciples as seen in The Last Supper, formerly from the perspective of Leonardo da Vinci and later Andy Warhol, is now transferred by Elli Chrysidou to the Imaret of Kavala, a place of multiple identities and contexts. The image is fragmented, painted red and enriched with scattered details of mythical creatures from the iconography of Dürer and the Alchemists. The group breaks up, the twelve students are separated, and an electric chair takes the place of Christ. The central hero is absent, the looks and gestures of the students fall into a gap, religious associations are lost. The red colour that dominates the installation and gives it its title – characteristic of Elli Chrysidou in all her work – functions as a signifier of a state of emergency, but also of a life-giving energy.
Elli Chrysidou was born in Thessaloniki and studied at the University of Nancy in France. She taught at the School of Fine Arts in Saint-Etienne (France). She has presented her work in 15 solo and many group exhibitions in Greece and abroad. Apart from her purely artistic and teaching work, she has also been involved in set design, children’s book illustration and visual communication design. Between 2013-2019 she was Deputy Mayor of Culture of the Municipality of Thessaloniki. In this position, she co-designed and led the project “LABattoir – Art for Social Change”, which took place between 2017-2019. From 2021, she continues her collaboration with the Common Lab project as the manager of the online workshop “Tale of X Cities”.
