What do the signs of this city tell us? What lies beneath and beyond? Who bares silent witness? Which voices are heard …and who is listening? How much blood, sweat and tears (or dumb luck) is involved?
Magic Eye looks to interrogate conditions for communication, trade and exchange in Athens — a site of intersecting and overlapping micro (and macro) histories, cross-cultural encounters and storytelling. Of particular interest is the diasporic settlement history of Nea Ionia and contributions of craft industries through art, design, textiles and tourism. The project explores local knowledge-systems and relationships between people, places, ecologies, and historic entanglements occurring on the ground. How can old and new connections challenge and reinvigorate our understandings of labour, leisure and pleasure? An archive can be a place to dream.
Images:
- Kerry Ann Lee, Big City Rising (大市上升), 2013. Pātaka Art + Museum Collection.
- Kerry Ann Lee, The Unavailable Memory of Gold Coin Cafe, 2015.
- Kerry Ann Lee, Placeholders (California), 2016.
- Kerry Ann Lee, Sabotage-and-Tradition, 2017.
- Kerry Ann Lee, Ordinary things will be signs for us, 2019. Photo by Xander Dixon.
is an artist, designer and scholar from New Zealand who explores culture clash, settlement, transformation and exchange in the Asia-Pacific and beyond. Known for her independent publishing and fanzines over the past two decades, she regularly works and exhibits nationally and internationally.