Half an hour

The notion of collage was quite simply, for me, unappealing. Perhaps I’d simply failed to be inspired by anything I’d seen. But as destiny would have it, Dimitris my teacher at the Ergastiri Zografikis in Athens, through a series of talks and patient exploration, introduced me to the world of collage, a world that stretched across ages, techniques, and movements like the thought-provoking Dada.

From torn fragments of paper to the mingling of diverse textures, Dimitris ignited the spark of creative enthusiasm for collage within me. He revealed how each piece could breathe new life into the old, forging connections between seemingly unrelated elements. As I delved deeper, I discovered that every snippet held a hidden narrative, waiting to be woven into the tapestry of my imagination. I’m not one for disorder but with Dimitris help I managed to find a fairly happy medium in the work above.

Just as Dada artists challenged the norm, my collages were born of freeform expression. Like Tristan Tzara and his comrades, I took inspiration from chaos and reconstructed it into something meaningful and captivating.

And then, I turned to a poem that held the power to resonate with my own life experiences. Constantine P. Cavafy’s “half an hour” unveiled a narrative of longing, a fleeting connection that was almost real, a bitter-sweet yearning for something just out of reach. This poem became a mirror, reflecting my struggles in the shadow of a controlling relationship that once held me captive.

Through a series of collages that breathed life into Cavafy’s words, each piece carried the essence of his lines, each layer a reflection of my own journey. As I cut, arranged, and rearranged, I was somehow reclaiming the narrative of my then present, expressing my emotions through this tangible art form. It was a powerful act of catharsis, a metamorphosis of pain into beauty, of captivity into liberation.

In the end, what was once an unfamiliar concept blossomed into a means of profound expression. The seemingly fragmented pieces merged into a mosaic that encapsulated my personal growth, resilience, and the courage to transmute pain into art. Through this journey of subtle collage, I found comfort in the transformative power of artistic creation.