Nicola Kountoupes                                        

Artist's statement:

A visual representation is a readable carrier of memory, but it is not fixed, in meaning or in form. Photos become intangible touchstones of identity that have a certain power to connect us with something out of our reach. They are tricky carriers of memory that can protect us, fool us, outlive us, or die in front of us, but they are a connection to something, ineffable, that we long for.

Food can be a beautiful metaphor for the creation of loss.   There is a potent, transient connection to a cultural heritage.   But what is lost or sustained depends on how we treat it because we construct meaning from what's been left for us to be discovered.   Fragmentation becomes a key theme to my work in this regard. I am interested in how we come upon these hopeful artifacts: how we imbue them with life, and how we consider their ruin.

Technique:

These are all digital images printed directly or transferred onto Filo, dough that is as thin as paper, intended to be layered, and is the basis for much of Greek cooking, which is part of my cultural heritage. The Filo dries and fragments exceedingly fast, so it's a good medium to help illustrate topics I am interested in: notions of desire and loss, relating to identity and history, and how we try to hold on and record, to continue a fleeting story.   

Some photos are made by shooting through the fragments and layers of the dough into an emitted light.   Others are excerpts from a series of photos I made over time, recording the deterioration process of pieces I left in a fixed location.