InstallationMessing with Cavafy
Onassis AiR Open Studio
2026
Messing with Cavafy is a new body of work that borrows from poet C.P. Cavafy’s own methodology, his perpetual revisiting and rewriting of poems, and his reconstruction of identity through diaries and personal archiving. Treating selfhood as something never settled, always in the making. The self, like the text, is never complete.
Bagaki follows the poet’s route as described in the diary of his first visit to Athens in 1901, My First Trip in Greece (June 13 – August 5, 1901). Retracing his steps, she revisits and photographs the places he once encountered, reflecting alongside Cavafy on desire, memory, and the ways we form ourselves through narratives, objects, and images. Public and private collapse into one another.
Rather than attempting to illustrate Cavafy or reconstruct his Athens, Bagaki became interested in using his methods of observation, remembering, editing, and withholding as a way of reconsidering her own relationship to the city, to images, and to her position as the person behind the gaze.
He stayed for a moment, 2026
Aluminum, photographic print, 59 × 42 cm
He improvised some words, 2026
Aluminum, photographic print, 59 × 42 cm
Bodies I, 2026
Prints mounted on Plexiglas boxes 44 x 25 x 34 cm
Bodies II, 2026
Prints mounted on Plexiglas boxes, 36 x 25 x 15 cm
Bodies, Buildings, and Becoming, 2026Printed paper, tape, C-prints, phototransfer on cellotape, fabric
Bodies and the city, 2026Silk organza, printed paper, fabric fusing tape, metal stand, metal clothes,
190 x 80 cm x 30 cm
(Front)
Bodies and the city, 2026
Silk organza, printed paper, fabric fusing tape, metal stand, metal clothes,
190 x 80 cm x 30 cm
(Back)
Silk organza, printed paper, fabric fusing tape, metal stand, metal clothes,
190 x 80 cm x 30 cm
(Back)