Ingenious Loci
Ingenious Loci in collaboration curator Maria Cristina Didero and the Benaki Museum present A Future for the Past, a project about people & craftsmanship. The project aims to raise awareness about marble craftsmanship born in the island of Tinos, Greece and the way this converses with contemporary design & current societal changes. The narrative picks up on social sustainability matters and wants to disseminate the very local tinian marble craftsmanship, also inscribed on the UNESCO list of Intangible Heritage, to the internation design, craft and art scene. Ultimately, it looks to secure a future for both craftsmanship and contemporary design.
The project unfolds in three phases:
Installation at 5VIE, Milan, April 17th - 23rd 2023
The first Phase A has been sucessfully completed during the milanese exhibition at 5VIE, where the rich Tinian legacy was manifested in Milan’s historic center. With the title ‘Design for Good’, and with a focus on sustainability rooted in mutual care, 5VIE emphasized that the strength of design lies in the poetic connection between the aesthetic dimension – in what is beautiful – with that of ethics – in what is good.
Ingenious Loci confronts this theme with an installation based on notions of belonging, identity and social cohesion. Specifically, their installation highlights the role of marble craftsmanship and the folk traditions around it, in strengthening the collective memory and subsequently the cultural heritage of Tinos in a contemporary and sustainable way.
The installation, finely crafted by the team of tinian sculptors Fortomas, Skalkotos & Mavromaras, consists of a temple-like space, a high altar table and a cabinet de curiosité.
A sculptor from the island said: “once you could hear children playing with the mantraka, at the street of Pyrgos you could hear water running and the bells, the doors of the houses were open to everyone and marble workshops round the corner open to everybody” nowadays Pyrgos is filled with tourists’ shops and there is little evidence of marble activity”.
This raises questions on what physical space we inhabit, but also questions on how we comprehend the world, now that the tangible aspects of making things has started diminishing. This aspect is particularly relevant today, as it highlights the value of marble sculpting in sustaining kinaesthetic knowledge. How do hand-related skills like sculpting engage the right and left part of the brain? Is it just a cognitive activity? And how do these skills contribute to human development in this rapid-changing, information-loaded era?
With A Future for the Past, on•entropy intends to merge local tradition with global appeal, reflecting imminent societal changes. Creating a tale of beauty and transformation over the centuries, they hope to secure a future for both craftsmanship and contemporary design.
Exhibition at Benaki Museum, Athens, June 4th - 30th 2024
The exhibition ‘A Future for the Past’ is part of a 2-year programme that aims to raise awareness about marble craftsmanship at the island of Tinos. The programme, in collaboration with marble atelier on•entropy and curator Maria Cristina Didero, brings together traditional craftsmanship and contemporary design and aims to showcase how their dialectic relationship can contribute to both social and economic sustainability.
Marble sculpting in Greece carries historical significance, as it is an art practiced for millennia and intertwined with the Greek cultural heritage. At the same time, today it can constitute a potential factor for social progress.
The research program, part of which is this exhibition, highlights precisely this aspect. Through kinaesthetic knowledge preserved across generations, the art of marble sculpting contributes to the strengthening of societal bonds within the villages of Tinos. Values such as the sense of belonging and the collective identity are brought to the forefront and consequently the quality of life improves. Especially during a period of intensive touristic development and gentrification at the island of Tinos, the empowerment of such values is more critical than ever.
The presentation of "A Future for the Past" at the Benaki Museum follows the successful installation at the international design hub in Milan and precedes a festival of marble craftsmanship at Tinos. The installation at Benaki Museum provides a unique opportunity for the museum’s contemporary greek marble exhibits to engage in a dialogue with the creations of tinian marble sculptors. These, in turn, will converse with a sculptural contemporary design object made by tinian marble sculptors.
Implemented with a hands-on, modern, inclusive and sustainable approach, this is an innovative synergy. It brings together the local and the international, and the traditional with the contemporary in the specific field of craftsmanship. The aim is that both, contemporary design and historic marble sculpting, can continue sustainably to the future, making Tinos a recognizable hub of cultural wealth.
A festival of marble craftsmanship will take place at the village of Pyrgos, merging works by local marble master crafstmen and contemporary designers. Through a wide programme consisting of exhibitions, talks, installations, the richest history of marble craftsmanship in the world will be revisited. The aim is to raise global awareness about those contemporary intangible matters that are sustained in parallel to this art and which have an immense social impact.
With a hands-on, modern, inclusive and sustainable approach, Ingenious Loci links marble art as practised today by local tinian artisans to contemporary design globally. Thus, together with awareness raising, the aim of the project is to suggest a practice through which both contemporary design and historic marble craftsmanship, can continue sustainably to the future.
Utopia by Design
Utopian Landscape, a digital recreation of a marble quarry at Dionysus, is potentground for an investigation into heritage, trade and population movement. Marble and light serve as useful metaphors for the shifting social and cultural patterns caused by migration, and for the paradoxes, continuities and disruptions of utopia. Marble idols, made in the Cyclades islands 5,000 years ago, were widely distributed across the Aegean Sea, providing evidence of early trade and travels. The Greek team reference the current flows and transitions of people, contextualised against a long history of population movement through Greece – a geographic bridge between east and west.