Weaving the valleys of love, 2023, fresh and dry plants, crocheted, woven, embroidered. From the art show “The Butterfly Effect”.

And from the seaweed of his feet a wave gently passes, 2019, woven seaweed of the Pacific Ocean.

DIMITRA SKANDALI

Text: Maro Voulgari | Photos: Victoria Mara Heilweil | Vera Dautllari | Spyros Hound

From one sea to another!

6,885 nautical miles! That’s the distance that lies between San Francisco and Paros. That venture also comprised other, shorter journeys, but it mainly entailed a long inward journey for Dimitra Skandali which, thankfully, keeps on going…

The School of Fine Arts, the Erasmus in the Netherlands, her sojourn in San Francisco, but also Paros, the beloved homeland, served as her powerful and profound propellants. Carrying strands of Pacific seaweed in her hands, Dimitra Skandali returns to Alyki to bring together diverse cultures under the ideational net of art by setting up an innovative artist-run space.

“My introduction to art was a journey of self-discovery,” she says. “A process of identity seeking and exploring the world through my own eyes. Travelling greatly contributed to that. When I went to Utrecht to be exposed to the art of central Europe I was left speechless. I keep thinking about the works I saw back then over and over again. They’ve had a profound impact on me…

After my Erasmus in 2009, I came to Greece for my thesis, and put together my exhibition: four installations featuring industrial materials, barbed wire, broken light bulbs and a pond full of water at the edge – a truly autobiographical comment alluding to the building materials I had been working on, and a connecting link between the past and the present.

My American story began to unfold with my Master’s degree at the San Francisco Institute. A story that lasted nine years. I went there in 2011 and felt as if I had landed on the moon. I was working and studying at the same time, and my family’s additional support was touching, even though mine was not a mainstream study option. Overall, the U.S. was a compact experience in terms of work and study, coupled with acceptance and acclaim. I immersed myself in studying and came up with some beautiful work.

And that’s where magic begins: going over to my godmother’s in San Diego for a short vacation, I discovered the Pacific Seaweed which I started weaving. And that was something quite compelling in itself, as this is a local material alright, yet it is also mine, steeped in my childhood memories. From the very beginning, my reference was fishermen’s nets. So, I knit or hand-weave textiles made of seaweed, revisiting the Greek needlework by way of the sea, an association that was unconsciously made. The fishermen on the island, in fact, keep gifting me the beautiful needles they have for fixing their nets, which used to be wooden and are now plastic.

This was the nature of my participation in the exhibition at the Petalouda (‘butterfly’) Tread factory, where I played with weaving and silk threads producing woven or crocheted textiles, as well as works made of synthetic threads that I find on the seashore. Embroideries, woven textiles and knitworks cover small or large surfaces, but I also play with the Greek seaweed, only in other ways. I write poetry on it in micro-calligraphy, I make bronze overlays… I also draw maps on marble – yet another one of the island’s materials, and a reference to my childhood. The Parian marble has been a long-lasting and deep desire of mine. Eventually, it has come to my attention that I’ve chosen a visual language which my parents can decipher – seaweed, fishing nets, longlines and needlework.

I meant to facilitate such a dialogue, only, this time, among artists, through the Cycladic Arts project (Hospitality Center for Cycladic Artists) based in Alyki. My grandmother’s, Mrs. Moschou’s, former residence has been converted into a modern space for hosting artists, aiming to foster the interaction and exchange of experiences among artists from Greece and abroad.”