MARIA PAPADIMITRIOU

Waiting Room
Site-Specific Installation;  In Situ;  

The installation is composed of old furniture and material that were left around the abandoned building of the former National Tobacco Corporation in Volos, Greece. Papadimitriou uses them to create a new space inside the old cell of the building, suggesting a new dual function: an administration office and a waiting room.

The found objects organize the new spaces that shape new ideas. The installation interacts with the rest of the exhibition. It encourages new production around the building offering a new temporary office to facilitate it. The memory of loss of work in the waiting room of the empty building is filtered through the view of the two administration desks next to it. The waiting room becomes a room for thought about labour, hierarchy and cooperation. The nostalgic images of former workers around the wall become the emblems of the new activation and the pallets where the found furniture seem to have been stocked become the passages to the new condition.

Papadimitriou explores new space production and articulation using simple, everyday elements, findings of previous uses and interrelations. Social behaviors and interactions resettle and are captured into the new spaces.

Yannis Arvanitis