Still Neighborhood | Vaggelis Tatsis
Info
- Duration: 19/10/2023-11/02/2024
- Opening days & hours: TU | WE | FR |SA | SU > 10:00-18:00, TH > 12:00-20:00
- Venue: MOMus-Museum of Contemporary Art
Artist
Vaggelis Tatsis
Curated by
Yorgos Prinos, Vaggelis Tatsis
Coproduction: MOMus-Museum of Contemporary Art-Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art and State Museum of Contemporary Art Collections
“Still Neighborhood” project started as a personal quest when I returned to the place where I grew up in order to initially photograph my family. I focused on the people I grew up with, familiar and accessible. Gradually, as the ideas and the experiences shaped into images, each of them determined the next step, the next shot, connected with the previous one but at the same time one step further from it. Portraits and places were originating from my own experiences, memories and nostalgia, then from the closest related people to me and gradually from a wider circle of people all of whom, closer and more distant, shared a connection at the same time introvert and extrovert with the area: from their family to their neighborhood, from their neighborhood to the suburb, from the suburb to the wider area of West Attica.
Neighborhood covers a necessity; a person’s need to be part of a community in which each one of them belongs keeping at the same time their identity. This need is similar to one’s need for faith or adoration.
Neighborhood is not only defined by geographical districts, but is also formed by the very same people who live there. Each person learns how to be part of the other’s life and share their daily routines.
Neighborhood change at a different pace than the greater city’s outlook. Here the pace changes with each generation, with a new puzzle of relationships to be created: neighbors become classmates, classmates become friends, friends become best friends and sometimes couples.
The place plays a significant role in people’s lives. It covers their basic needs. The place molds the people and they in turn transform the place with their dynamic and their life path. This relationship – almost as a dependency – between people and their area is of utmost importance, absolutely and determinant for both sides.
My photographic interest is not only centered around people and their place but also on their characters, their personalities and their interaction, a more complex relationship pattern that connects them. The mosaic that is gradually formed is concrete and at the same time fluid, creating a constantly enlarging circle without fading or becoming alienated from the quest itself. The quest for identity.