Dimitris Kontodimos participated as an artist in the first edition of IONIAN LAB, the new artist residency presented by Space52 and Kalogerou on the island of Othoni in July 2026. As part of the residency, he created the work “Not to Touch the Earth, Not to See the Sun.”

The work takes its title from Jim Morrison, who in 1968 borrowed two phrases from the table of contents of James George Frazer’s book The Golden Bough. The phrases came from Chapter LX, titled “Between Heaven and Earth,” and referred to ancient taboos imposed on kings, priests, and other sacred figures. According to Frazer, these figures were considered bearers of a power so absolute and dangerous that their contact with the ordinary world had to be avoided. They were not allowed to touch the ground. They were not allowed to look directly at the sun. Suspended between heaven and earth, they existed in a perpetual state of limbo, belonging fully to neither this world nor the next.

Taking this symbolic and mythological reference as its starting point, Dimitris Kontodimos’s work creates an image of tension between the desire to escape and the inability to do so. Three seemingly unrelated objects form a unified, indivisible composition: a chair facing west is held in place by a strap tied around the cylindrical shaft of an old windmill. The image does not function as a mechanism of restraint, but as a visible manifestation of an unresolved tension. The desire to escape and the inability to do so coexist within the same gesture.

Not to Touch the Earth, Not to See the Sun thus constructs a visual narrative about the fraught space between staying and fleeing—a condition that has shaped the identity of the Ottomans throughout history.

At the same time, the establishment of IONIAN LAB as an initiative that connects the Ionian Islands with contemporary artistic networks strengthens the dialogue between the local context, the artwork, and the broader field of contemporary artistic practice.