The Byzantine & Christian Museum presents the solo exhibition of the distinguished artist Maria-Smaragda Skourta entitled “Byzantine Transcriptions. Gardens all light”.

In the painting section entitled “Gardens full of light”, the artist’s works, inspired by the iconic majesty of motifs in Byzantine illuminated manuscripts, are in conversation with the Museum’s gardens. By transcribing miniature details surrounding the Byzantine manuscript texts, Maria-Smaragda Skourta creates painted representations, three-dimensional constructions and digital installations with an original kaleidoscopic perspective. Protograms, floral, animal and geometric motifs as well as secular or religious scenes of historical manuscripts are used as models for the creation of different compositions of multi-layered image space. The opposing projection of these images literally “binds” the viewer’s gaze in an uninterrupted process of multiple readings.

In the second section, entitled “Devotions”, where the artist draws inspiration from cult objects in the Museum’s collections, using mixed media and materials, she creates Byzantine-tropical reliefs with seal stones, representations of bread and talismans. These works, intensely charged by the sacredness and mystical power of the symbols that compose them, seek to create bridges of aesthetic connection between the viewer and key components of his or her cultural origins.

The artist’s long apprenticeship in Byzantine art has taught her the correct treatment of the originals and their symbolism and then to recreate them with due respect. Thus, the works presented in the temporary exhibition of the Byzantine & Christian Museum, on the ground floor of the historic mansion of the Duchess of Plakentia, are, as a whole, a means of familiarizing the public with a highly symbolic art, challenging them at the same time to decipher it in their turn and to reconstruct their own new realities, full of the fragrance, harmony and spirituality of an intimate past!

Exhibition duration: 28 July to 27 October 2022