Meeting Point 07: Museum of the Macedonian Struggle and Modern History of Macedonia

Paraskevi Giapani – Paskevision, The Wise Earth Reveals the liberated Greece, 2021, mixed media on Belgian linen with hand-stitched elements and acrylic paint, 150 × 150 cm, Collection of the Museum of the Macedonian Struggle and Modern History of Macedonia Foundation

The artwork “The Wise Earth Reveals the liberated Greece” by Paraskevi Giapani – Paskevision was created in 2021 as part of the visual arts competition organised by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in collaboration with the Foundation of the Museum of the Macedonian Struggle and Modern History of Macedonia, held to mark the 200th anniversary of the Greek Revolution of 1821, where it received a Second Commendation. It is a mixed-media artwork inspired by the traditional greek fustanella, featuring hand stitching on Belgian linen and acrylic paint. The artwork is large in scale, approximately the size of a square window.

The composition consists of four square canvases joined to form a single square. At their point of convergence, a cross is formed, dividing the artwork into four quadrants. Upon this surface unfolds a fustanella with 400 pleats, 200 of which radiate outwards to form a circle of fine rays, while the remaining pleats return towards the centre, forming four squares that allude to the first Greek flag. The texture of the fabric is soft yet firm, while the pleats generate lines that structure the composition.

Along the pleats, at their outer edges, two hundred events from the history of Greece and Cyprus are sewn with blue thread, arranged in chronological order from 1821 to 2020. The letters are hand-stitched, lending the artwork a pronounced materiality and linking it to folk tradition. The colour palette is restrained, moving through gentle beige and ecru tones, while the blue thread alludes to the colours of the Greek flag.

At the centre of the composition, two crimson abstract forms made from the ties of the fustanella’s belt resemble lips and are positioned facing one another, one below the other. A diagonal line, formed by the wide fabric band of the belt, cuts across the centre of the composition from upper right to lower left, passing over the lips. This line conceptually conveys the restrictions of the period during which the artwork was created, when humanity was living under the compulsory use of face masks due to the pandemic.

The fustanella, as a traditional garment and emblem of the Greek Revolution, is here transformed into a distinctive chronological record. Each pleat corresponds to a historical event, and each stitch to a memory of the past, creating a living map of history that connects time with the Earth. The title refers to “wise Earth” as a bearer of memory, preserving and revealing the past through human [acts].

The artwork functions as a point of convergence between history and art, tradition and the present. Rather than recounting history in a didactic manner, it transforms it into an experience, in which the past contributes to an understanding of the present while opening towards the future. Through the act of stitching and the inscription of events, the artist reminds us that history remains alive only when it returns to memory and collective consciousness.

The creative description of the artwork “The Wise Earth Reveals the liberated Greece” by Paraskevi Giapani – Paskevision is the result of co-creation by the participants in Meeting Point 07: Museum of the Macedonian Struggle and Modern History of Macedonia.

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