On Thursday, April 2, from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., the solo exhibition by Marilia Fotopoulou will open at the Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center.

The exhibition will run through May 9, 2026. Text by Manolis Moresopoulos

 At the site of the loss, where a life was violently taken, the wayside shrine remains as a tangible trace of memory inscribed in the public space. Scattered along national highways, rural roads, and urban outskirts, these shrines make private trauma visible in the collective sphere. Fotopoulou’s photographic work approaches the shrines as transitional sites of memory, where faith, mourning, and decay intertwine with the Greek landscape.

In the first section, the iconostases are examined through their exterior appearance and their relationship with the surrounding environment. The images open a window onto the landscape, highlighting the way in which they are integrated into it, while simultaneously marking it, transforming it into a place of memory. Their presence, at times discreet and at others intensely charged, marks a personal fissure within the public space, while simultaneously reflecting the temperament of the people and the culture that created them.

Marilia Fotopoulou, Iconostases 2021, Fine Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle paper, framed with UV-protected glass, 78x115cm

In the second section, the gaze shifts inward. The eye enters the dark shell of the structure, a mysterious space where the passage of time is condensed, while memory sometimes persists and sometimes fades. In some cases, only fragments remain: an icon, a candlestick, a photograph, or simply the remnants of human care. The original religious symbolism has receded, and the eroded interiors of the iconostases, having now lost their original functional significance, shift from a place of worship to a realm of silence and decay, exuding an otherworldly aura. Decay reconstructs a new image, where abandonment emerges as the dominant trace of memory. Everything decays, just as memory itself decays.

Marilia Fotopoulou, Iconostases 2023, Fine Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle paper, framed with UV-protected glass, 57 x 57cm

The way the artist handles photographic distance and proximity, the use of scale in the composition of interior images, and the presence of elements reminiscent of church architecture all contribute to a symbolic interpretation of the space. Rather than being treated as mere remnants of ritual practice, the iconostases emerge as forms situated at the threshold of life and death, the visible and the invisible, memory and oblivion, personal experience and collective experience. Fotopoulou’s works are not limited to documentation, but engage with the material, sensory, and semantic intensity of these structures, where absence takes form and the trace remains active.