At the Hotel Xenia in Andros 2001–2012 [An Archive Opens]
Lizzie Calligas

Lizzie Calligas opens an archive of images that she has been collecting for more than a decade. The project At the Xenia Hotel in Andros, 2001-2012 [An Archive Opens] aspires to more than being purely an exhibition. By intent, it is comprised of only part of the archival material collected by Lizzie Calligas who, from 2001 to 2012, kept a record of the condition and the damage suffered by the Hotel Triton (Xenia Andros) of Aris Konstantinidis. Calligas lays emphasis on the power and ability of photography to create history, exactly because of what it documents. Evidently, a photograph is a transitional impression of reality which, in any case, can never be only one. Here however, Calligas does not simply collect photographic material but brings added significance to the original material by creating an archive of images. Moving beyond the art of recording history, evidence and memories, she acts as mediator between the past and present with an archive that documents but also interprets, suggesting new stories through the artistic experience. By reenergizing the past in photographic and archival form, she speaks not only for that past but also makes a statement on how alive and open it can be to reading, interpretation and even application.