Five young Greek artists, whose work relates to the concept of devotion, introspection and the handmade, participate in the group exhibition And the Work of Our Hands, at ArtWall project space. Works on paper by Vasilis Botoulas, Panos Famelis and Stratis Tavlaridis, a six-meter-long installation by Panagiotis Voulgaris and a large-format composite photo by Maria Mavropoulou compose a minimalist visual landscape, which sensitively touches upon the various aspects of the relationship between labour and work — all the while creating a space that is offered for self-reflection and exploration.

Springing from the distinction that philosopher Hanna Arendt makes in her work The Human Condition between labour and work (“the labour of our bodies and the work of our hands”), the exhibition’s concept is to reveal the microscale on which the artistic hand operates, as well as the fragile, organic process out of which a work of art emerges. All the works at the exhibition share the element of repetition: obsessive lines and brushstrokes, thousands of daintily cuts with a surgical knife on paper, endless hours of digital photo editing and hundreds of meters of silk thread reveal, through their simplicity, the laborious intervention of the artist as a creative body in the world — while at the same time they materialise the arduous labour and time spent to be completed.

Vasilis Botoulas, Panos Famelis, Maria Mavropoulou, Stratis Tavlaridis, Panagiotis Voulgaris