BELOW SEA LEVEL
An exhibition by Thalassini Douma
Visiting hours, daily and weekends from 14:00 to 17:30
The Herakleidon Museum is pleased to present the exhibition titled Below Sea Level by the artist photographer Thalassini Douma from April 4 to June 18, 2023, curated by Nina Fragopoulou, Marine Ecologist PhD in collaboration with Manolis Karterakis, Art Historian.
The purpose of the exhibition is to highlight the geomorphological features of the Dead Sea through the eyes of the artist-photographer and to point out the problem of human interventions and the climate crisis in nature.
The Dead Sea is a very special ecosystem, an example of environmental degradation, both due to human impacts and the climate crisis, as well as due to its geological characteristics. In effect, it is a salt lake on a tectonic depression in the Judean desert, on Jordan’s border with Palestine and Israel. Its surface is the lowest level of land below sea level (430m below the average level of the Mediterranean). Its salty water (24%), which is about 9 times denser than that of the sea, keeps the bathers on the surface, creating a unique swimming experience. The extreme salinity precludes almost all forms of life. Due to the diversion of the Jordan River, which feeds it, the pumping of large amounts of water for domestic use, irrigation and potash production in combination with the scanty rainfall and intense evaporation due to the climate crisis, its surface shows a sharp drop of ~1m per year. This results in the formation of terraces on the coastline. It is estimated that the sea level has dropped by 40 meters since 1960. In addition, the dissolution of salt deposits by the fresh water of underground springs has created over 5500 sinkholes that make the presence of human structures and agricultural activities precarious. The layers of rock-sediments in the area are quite impressive. Both the dissolved mineral salts and the black mud make it suitable for spas, with therapeutic and cosmetic properties.
As the art historian Manolis Karterakis points out,
“Thalassini Douma's photographic series Below sea level is an exploration mission to the lowest point of the continental Earth’s crust, the Dead Sea. The artist-photographer has chosen simple black and white through photos and videos to poetically intertwine both the mystery of the ancient lake and its escalating ecological destruction. Through distinctive close-ups, as well as panoramic shots of a linear and rhythmic precision, both aspects of the lake’s surface as well as million-year-old rock layers surrounding it are sensitively recorded. The subjects unfold like musical forms that project the sounds of water and silence. The photographic images, harmoniously and tightly structured, are arranged in a poetic manner reflecting the artist’s sentient gaze through a succession of fluid moments in an abstract space between the vast and the minimal, where the apocalyptic landscape is constantly moving and changing. The light sometimes highlights the moon-like beauty of the ancient lake and at other times brings out in relief its wounded body turning its sediments and sinkholes into wrinkles and cracks. The viewer cannot remain unaffected bythese characteristic points of emphasis, and is invited to observe them and follow this journey that has now acquired a spiritual dimension.”
As the artist notes,
“The series is an approach that is ultimately linear in time: it connects the past with the present, the millennia-long movement of the natural components of Mother Earth below sea level and above it, through a stratification that is constantly moving into an eternal journey. It is ultimately a quest into the ancient bowels of the Earth”
Thalassini Douma was born in Athens. Studied at the University for Foreigners of Perugia, University of Urbino and the Roberto Rossellini Institute in Rome. She lived in Italy between 1987 and 1998, where she came into contact with the contemporary art circles of San Lorenzo and the vecchia avant-garde art in Rome.
As a photojournalist, since 1991, she has covered crises in war zones and their impact on daily life on numerous assignments from the war in former Yugoslavia, to the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan. In 1998 she began collaborating with the Associated Press in Athens as a photojournalist and for two years (2002-2004) she worked for the Athens 2004 Olympic Games Organizing Committee.
Her artwork has been hosted in a series of solo and collective exhibitions in Greece and abroad since 2006. Thalassini lives in Greece and travels often to create and expand her photographic projects, favouring issues concerning the environment and the connection of man with Mother Nature, which brought her to Greenland, the underground canyons of Arizona and the Amazon rain forest.
The exhibition is carried out with the collaboration of Harokopio University.
LECTURE
Wednesday, May 18, 19:00 - 20:00
Dead Sea: A unique and environmentally sensitive landscape under the threat of climate change.
E. Karymbalis, Professor of Fluvial & Coastal Geomorphology, Geography Department, School of Environment, Geography & Applied Economics, Harokopio University