My Big, Fat,
Greek Kitsch Fantasy
Publication and series of furniture pieces,
Installation
July 2024
Graduation project exhibited at the Graduation show,
Dutch Design Week 2024
“Greek cultural heritage is complex, often shaped by fantasised representations of classical antiquity and other signifiers associated with the country’s history and geography. Whether these are accurate depictions of Greek culture or not, such clichés have been adopted by the diaspora in many parts of the world in order to recreate a sense of identity when settling abroad. In a dialogue between visual research and production, Phèdre Barbas translated many of these symbols – from classical architecture to the fake stucco walls that might be found inside a Greek restaurant – into a series of furniture pieces that act as a pastiche of different archetypes, each questioning the semiotic language used in the construction of a national identity.”
Colin Keyes.
The publication is structured around five intertwined axes differentiated by their format and type of paper, following a non-linear narration.
«The Greek Kitsch Essay, the creation of a myth» retranscribes the way the national narrative of the newborn Greek state of the 19th century is following a continuity with the Classical Greek civilization, under the impulsion of the Greek diaspora and of an European cultural elite wishing to break centuries of Byzantine and Ottoman tradition. In the very same perspective, some elements of the Antique Greek culture, once extracted and re-contextualized, integrate contemporary culture, creating a phenomenon of commodification of Greek culture.
«The boat» traces, through photography, my itineraries in Greece, during my research. They are representative of my relationship to Greece, and, at the end, of the relationship one coming from a diasporic community has. It is a relationship of movement, a relationship of in-between.
«A world tour in fantasized Greece, the architecture of restaurants as non Greek-Greek stereotypical architecture» presents a collection of images of restaurants in Greece around the world, showing the homogenization of a Greek identity that has its main relevance outside of Greece, where it becomes necessary to signify that something is Greek ; therefore, the paradox of authenticity.
The Big Atlas of Kitsch is a collection of kitsch images following the theme of Greece, collected on internet or by my own means.
«The process» retranscribes the way I translated and materialized this research, in order to create my very own, physical fantasy of Greece.
You can find the chapters « The Greek Kitsch Essay, the creation of a myth » and “The Big Atlas of Kitsch” here.
