The idea of getting together and working with a group of international artists in Pitroforos, a small village on a hill on the isle of Andros, was born at Diner last summer, a small restaurant in New York.

This international event was based on the Garden of Epicurus and the philosopher’s radically advanced attitude to life [...]. A similar “unincorporated” unstaged world was the backdrop for the eight invited artists from Athens, New York and Berlin who uncovered another region of creating and cohabitation [...].

Maria Papadimitriou brought with her the map of Greece which she has exhibited before – a cartography of her own visits and interventions throughout the country – that was taped on the wall of the main house. Signage that she uses in the series of “Hotel” appropriations found their natural place immediately: “Reception,” “Traveler’s Rest.” Her initial plan to set a Lidl tent and use it as the frame for a cement construction that would become a meditation room was overturned by the weather. It took almost all of the artists three hours to install in the menacing wind: an act of defiance, collaboration and land sailing that concluded to another medium: the deep golden/beige tent, pulsating like a Chinese dragon and grinding sound of the wind became the protagonist for her video work First Andros International Hotel.

Helena Papadopoulos

Excerpts from “Andros,” a. the Athens contemporary art review, 5, Summer, p. 61.