But are we the only dreamed ones? at Daily Lazy Projects / Athens

ARTISTS_ Eleni Tsamadia, Alizée Gazeau, Konstantinos Giotis

CURATOR_ Faidra Vasileiadou

10 September – 21 September 2019


Daily Lazy Projects
Vissarionos 9, 10680 Athens, Greece




photos credits: Konstantinos Giotis




The reason of the exhibition, “But are we the only dreamed ones?” is the exchange of correspondence between Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan, two of the most important figures of poetry and literature of the 20th century. Their dramatic and impassioned relationship was formed by the reciprocity of their letters, which for nearly 20 years relieved their existential quest while at the same time shaping their poetic works. A remarkable feature of this union is the creation of a peculiar linguistic grid, based on love and arguing, forming dense poetry with secret echoes.

Somewhere here lies the issue of this exhibition, the invention of a personal “language”, romantic and yet erotic, to the artist himself, an alphabet that only empathy and trauma can pronounce. Observing the dipoles developing between the artist and the artistic formation, this relationship is undoubtedly a romance and is wrapped up with the invention of this personal idiom. Not infrequently, fragments of this language are scattered throughout their works. Small gestures, a different observation of their artwork, ultimately betray the character that this exhibition wants to enlight: the artistic act consists of erotic words.

The viewer is invited to discover the subcutaneous romanticism of the three young artists participating in the exhibition. Eleni Tsamadia, Alizée Gazeau and Konstantinos Giotis, through different prisms, confirm the existence of the lost language of the lovers. Love is not limited to the Other, as artists use romantic gestures to approach existence, contestation, the journey of the artist, the artistic creation itself. Harvesting the subconscious, observing the points that are not visible, are driven by the shadows collecting fragments – losses and dreams – where they eventually generate their own alphabet: a language of the dreamed ones.

“Life is not going to accommodate us, Ingeborg; waiting for that would surely be the most unfitting way for us to be. Be – yes, we can and are allowed to do so. To be – be there for another. Even if it is only a few words, alla breve, one letter once a month: the heart will know how to live.”

Celan to Bachmann, 31 Oct. 1957




-Faidra Vasileiadou