I constructed an installation in the arcade next to the central gate of Ioannina, using video projections and absorbing slides with a filter. I created figures of people from the past who are lost in a path, evoked by time. The friction with the history of Ioannina and the expulsion of the Jewish people of Ioannina created the need for me to depict them as a moving monument. The castle was predominantly an area where many Jewish citizens of Giannina lived, as it was an area with different mentalities, but until 1944 they all coexisted together. Through this work I want to show the course of these people in today’s reality. History may be the past of a city but it never ceases to move into the present and shape its culture and beliefs.
Athina Pavlou Benazi (b. 1994) is a visual artist active in Athens. In recent years, using painting, video and sound as her main media , she creates environments – installations that take the notion of “wave” as their starting point. Raised in Alexandroupolis, the idea of the wave as a shelter has always existed both as an experience and as a daily stimulus. She studied at the Department of Plastic Arts and Art Sciences, School of Fine Arts, University of Ioannina from 2012-2018, specializing in painting. During her undergraduate studies, she received an Erasmus scholarship at the Facultad de Bellas Artes at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid in 2015-2016. In 2021 she graduated from the Master of Fine Arts at the Higher School of Fine Arts, Athens, defending her thesis “The Blue Shelter”. Since 2014 she has been presenting her work in exhibitions in Greece. In 2019 she received an honorary distinction at the Student Biennale for the work “The stones start spinning
