The experience of growing up on Paros, an island in the Aegean Sea in Greece, and Dimitra Skandali’s journey since then to build a community across the oceans, is central to her work. Carrying her island with her everywhere and it shapes the way she sees the world. Creating installations inspired by their exhibition spaces weaving together found elements from those locales to create ethereal forms; reminders of the sea, with its openness and possibilities, as well as its fragile and unstable limitations. The process of familiarizing herself with these new places through the search for materials helps to weave together points of connection in an ever-expanding web, even if only temporarily.
Self-taught or art school?
Art school.
If you could own one work of art what would it be?
Anything from Gego (Gertrude Goldschmidt) would make me extremely happy, sculptural or drawing.
How would you describe your style?
Conceptual/Post Arte Povera.
Is narrative important within your work?
Not really; materials and the process themselves create the narrative. My intention is to create an experience, so I aim to activate the senses, to convey emotions and at the same time trigger the brain. I see my pieces as an opportunity to re-appreciate nature, and every-day, non-significant, discarded materials, natural or man-made. I wish to create a whole world out of (almost)nothing using symbolism, rising awareness that reflects contemporary issues on interdependency, interconnectedness, respect and acceptance of the different, issues of diaspora and cultural heritage, as well as love and peaceful coexistence with nature and with each other.
Who are your favourite artists and why?
Gego (Gertrude Goldschmidt) and Louise Bourgeois: they both started their careers as artists late in their lives and they left works that touch the soul. Pioneers who added a female perspective in a much-needed man-dominated art world. A constant inspiration for the human species as they kept creating until they died.
Marisa Merz: being the wife of a major figure in his time (Mario Merz), I believe she never expected the recognition she had in her 90ies. Her retrospective at the Hammer Museum made my soul smile. In the 60’s she was the only female protagonist associated with Arte povera, the only one who brought the female perspective into the movement.
Eleni Boukoura-Altamoura: the first Greek woman who studied art in the mid 19th century pretending to be a man as it was not accepted for the women to enter the universities. An era where women wouldn’t even vote (the first efforts appeared close to that time), living on the island of Spetses, in a country that was just formed (Greece), and with a family with no education who supported her passion showing simple people’s greatness.
Tomas Saraceno and Olafur Eliason: both of them because of how much inspired they are by nature and science and how they engage the community.
What or who inspires your art?
Environmental and cultural issues. The island and the way I grew up. Its people. Tradition. Nature. The sea. The people I meet. The places I visit and their histories. The sites I work and their surroundings, light, sounds, people, passers-by. The way I live (being in a constant move, living and working in two disparate cultures).
Where’s your studio and what’s it like?
I make work everywhere: travelling by boats, planes, buses and trains; on the beach; in nature; on my bed; on a chair while waiting. No need to have a studio: I experiment with materials/ideas wherever I can and then, I create site-specific, site-responsive installations. Working from small to large scale.
Do you have any studio rituals?
It depends: sometimes I need to start with reading, poetry or art-related books, or writing down my thoughts. Sometimes doing a repetitive action like knotting the seagrasses. And then continue with other repetitive actions like weaving, embroidering or crocheting the strands of seagrasses that I have made. When in nature, by the sea or elsewhere, I draw or take long walks and appreciate every step, collecting materials I find inspiring. Seeing, listening and absorbing my surrounding is very much what I do. Movement and my body become the filter and the process through which the making happens. Materials decide where they want to go and I just follow. I work very intuitively. Of course, very often and because of my commitments to participate in exhibitions or commissions, I create bodies of work based on specific themes.
What are you working on currently?
On several projects:
During these weird times that we all experience, and being outside the United States, I have just finished with my petition for the extension of my O1 visa, although I don’t even know when I am able to return. While I currently live and work on Paros, my home island in Greece, and feel that I am far away from everything happening in the art world internationally, I try to stay connected using online recourses.
At the same time: I take as much time as I can with my family, creating some pieces together; I work for a site-specific temporary outdoors installation which I will present during the Paros Festival in a few days; on commissioned projects, for clients who live on the island; for several pieces to present in future exhibitions (solo and group shows) in Greece, in San Francisco and in Los Angeles; for a curatorial project involving Greek and American artists who were to travel and present their works in the Torrance Art Museum in LA in the spring of 2020 and it has been postponed for 2021.
Remaining on the island since last year has been the opportunity to continue working more systematically on a life-time dream: to create an artist in residency centre in my home village; something that I have started from 2015 but being present has helped me to bring it closer to what I have envisioned.
Where can we buy your art?
From Don Soker Contemporary in San Francisco, Bay Area in the United States, contact Don Soker: donsoker15@gmail.com and/or emailing me @dimskandali@gmail.com if it is from around the world.