exhibition works

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

The Embassy of the Kingdom of Morocco and Kalfayan Galleries have the pleasure of presenting the opening of the solo exhibition of Yiannis Hadjiaslanis, titled “Intersections”, on Friday, 15 November 2013, from 20.00 to 22.00.

The exhibition “Intersections” presents the photographic project of Yiannis Hadjiaslanis developed in Morocco in 2013. By presenting an inspired juxtaposition of photographic diptychs, the artist reveals the multilayered cultural identity of contemporary Morocco as well as its strong connections with the Mediterranean basin.

According to the artist:

Intersections is a journey.

It began as an attempt to locate my understanding of an oft-photographed country within an everyday reality beyond the imagined, beyond the cliché.

It evolved into a meditation on transition amid the fragile custodianship of tradition. And it became a study of unexpected lyricism in the mundane.

This collection of images, shot in the early summer of 2013, embraces an honesty approaching the realm of documentary, an observation of the unnoticed, the imperfect.

Over 23 days, I visited eleven cities and towns, constructing and curating a portrait of contemporary Morocco through my lens.

It was a different Morocco than I had imagined, sitting at the Explorers Lounge in downtown Athens with Ambassador El Ansari.

Across the Mediterranean, as I travelled through cities with names synonymous with the exotic – Casablanca, Tangier, Fez, Marrakech - I found echoes of the familiar.

By train, bus, grand taxi, and camel, I crossed a different kind of desert, watched the rolls of a different kind of sea, but found a resonant beauty in the pursuit of everyday existence.

Visiting popular locations, but within them, making a subject of the ordinary, I aimed to find points where all the diverse elements that I encountered intersect and coexist.

From the north, lush and green, to the endless, arid plains of desert in the south, I explored a country in flux, not only in the throes of its economic development and self-definition, but too, in its diversity of landscape and light.

The images are exhibited in pairs, demonstrating their relationship and familiarity within and with one another, but highlighting elements in their contrast that would otherwise go unnoticed. It allows the construction of a new narrative, a celebration of discovery in antithesis. Intersections is a reflection upon the happy accidents of the explorer, of the quiet joy in stumbling upon beauty in the unobvious, a discovery of the sacred in the everyday.

With the kind sponsorship of Intralot