MARIOS PAVLOU

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“I am looking out across the surface of a dark lake. It is about two miles to the opposite shore, and as far as I can comprehend it is about one mile long. Trees that don’t usually grow in water and plants that are easier to imagine in a jungle are appearing in the shadows and reflect the colours of this night. Around them individual swirls and gentle circles emerge from the water. A meeting point between these two layers. Just like a dream…”

 

Last night I dreamt that water loved me references Gaston Bachelard’s philosophical essay about water and the materiality of dreams, the feminine aspect of elemental water and it’s properties, as well as relations between cultural myths and historical figures such as Hippolyte Bayard, Ophelia, Hatshepsut, Moses and Narcissus. 

 

The installation becomes a platform where poems and songs unravel. They comment on gender fluidity, transgenderism and the rediscovery of body and language. In parallel, there is a commentary on different forms of literal and metaphorical drowning through a visual exploration of the sublime and the duality connected to them. 

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As the mirror of the earth, the sea is used in my artistic research as a platform of symbolism for themes of peace, gender, and identity. Deeply influenced by the world of materiality, the installation touches upon moments of calm and peace reflected in the Mediterranean Sea, as well as moments when this sea becomes politicized, as it conceals the bodies of wars, drowns, carries dangers, and simultaneously gets polluted.

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