THE MERCY OF HEAVEN

Within the geological game of land transformations, where today destructive anthropogenic activity is added as a critical factor, it is not difficult to imagine the rise in sea level, as much as would be needed for the city of Athens to sink into the Saronic Gulf and for the waters of the Aegean Sea to flood the surface of the city.

In the central underground dome of the Eleonas Metro station, a light structure is suspended, resembling a mooring of vessels with buoys-remetza, above the heads of passing passengers. The visual experience of moored boats and vessels, viewed through the seabed with a mask, familiar from swimming on the Greek coastlines, is conveyed. Thus, under the dome of the station we are transported to the bottom of a flooded landscape, where we live the experience of viewing the world underwater. It is a post-apocalyptic image, at the end of the Anthropocene era, where the cycle between the mythical beginnings of time and the end of the human world closes. There, under the floating buoys, there is an allusive reference to the primary divine act of the Theogony: It is the castration of the patriarchal symbol, Uranus, in a conspiracy of Kronos (Chronus), son of Uranus with his mother Gaia. The mythological castration of Uranus by Earth and her son, with all the psychoanalytic implications open, becomes a symbol of Gaia’s life-giving power against the patriarchal forces of destruction, caused by the violent change of climate above our heads, in a disturbed, furious sky.