Ι my Sea Journey, I my Land Claim

The installation touches upon the environmental destruction that the planet is experiencing today, starting from the coastal zone of Elefsina. Continuing her artistic work on the myth of Medea, Stefania Strouza chooses as a reference point Heiner Müller’s three-piece play Despoiled Shore – Medeamaterial – Landscape with Argonauts (1982). In this text, Medea is perceived as a “place” in which memories and traumas of a violent patriarchal and consumerist world are embedded. The artist makes use of this interpretation and proceeds to identify Medea with Nature and with the land of Elefsina, taking into account the consequences of heavy industry as well as the corrosion of abandoned ships in the area.

The work is a sculptural installation in three distinct yet connected parts following the structure of Müller’s text. These parts are developed in space as islets and parts of a coastal area such as the bay of Elefsina. Despoiled Shore refers to a “landscape with nature in decay”, as Müller himself describes it, where the traces of human pollution and destruction are visible. Medeamaterial evokes the wedding dress with which Medea killed Glauce and focuses on the danger of invisible pollution and the socio-political atmosphere that threatens entities and communities around the world. Landscape with Argonauts refers to the mythological Argo and to the carcasses of decommissioned ships and is a commentary to the collective unconscious of a modern society confronted with its own responsibility.

In this visual triptych, Medea as a place traumatised by human activity allows the relationships between nature and culture, resilience and decay, myth and reality to become visible, so that their connection and interdependence can also become noticeable. Balancing between them as a techno-physical force, her character reveals, according to the artist, how myths can speak to the ruined landscapes of the Anthropocene and activate practices of collective knowledge and action through materiality itself.

Text by the exhibition curator Daphne Dragona
From the solo exhibition at the Old Oil mill Factory, Elefsina, 2023  

A production by 2023 Eleusis European Capital of Culture