On the occasion of the 3rd Sinop Biennale in Turkey, Papadimitriou built her most recent hotel project Otel Nokul. 

Papadimitriou chose to draw on Sinop’s notorious prison, which is famous in Turkey because some of the nation’s most important intellectuals were held there. She found an ex-prison bus in disuse and turned this well-known public function of incarceration and confinement into a public platform for resting and welcoming. In this heated space, rather confined and sparsely furnished, the artist covered a significant section of its large metal walls with glossy-print magazines. Taking up her Greek identity as a means to provoke these mnemonic frontiers, she used Greek magazines to cover the hotel walls. The effect was immediate. This paper collage was soon torn down by locals, bringing the original walls of the bus back into visitors’ full view. This act proved to be quite symbolic with regard to the notion of the collective mnemonic makeup of the city, for although memories of the past can elapse and be forgotten, their traces in history cannot be erased, and they remain alive in abandoned objects and the walls of the city, partaking of the uniqueness and extraordinary characteristics of the host city.

Maria Halkias

Excerpt from a previously unpublished text, 2011.