InstallationA la Crète
Part of the group exhibition Paradise Drift at Phaistos Archaeological site
curated by Panos Giannikopoulos and Katerina Gnafaki
2026
Eleni Bagaki investigates the ways in which images, objects and archival materials shape our relationship to place, memory and desire, revealing the mechanisms through which cultural imaginaries are produced. In A la Crète, three sculptural forms inspired by the Minoan storage pithoi of the Phaistos palace are overlaid with images drawn from a French travel brochure from the 1990s/ The work interweaves the circulation of material goods with the circulation of images, transforming the pithos from a vessel of storage into a carrier of visual exchange. The pithos becomes à surface of inscription where archaeological form and tourist iconography coexist. The photographs cease to function as ephemeral promotional material and instead acquire the permanence of sculptural objects, while the pithos comes to carry images rather than goods.
The work traces the routes through which forms circulate, are reproduced and acquire new meanings, proposing place as the outcome of recurrent processes of inscription, circulation and signification.
Text by Panos Giannikopoulos
Installation view
À la Crète – Pithos I, 2026
Print on aluminum Etalbond, concrete
77 × 48 × 20 cm
À la Crète – Pithos IIi, 2026
Print on aluminum Etalbond, concrete
125 × 62 × 25 cm
Installation