Waking Up

from the series Oblations, 2025

When venerating an icon, individuals might leave a donation or offering in a designated place near the icon stand. These items can include wax figures (e.g. of body parts, of baby figures, crowns, houses) offered as thanksgivings for healing or prayers answered, or in advance protection.

In the series of photographs Oblations, three methods of work took place. Keeping as a stable parameter the vertical rectangular outline -that an icon has- I invented potential co protagonists in the scene, which can act as a kind of oblation, throughout undefined daily rituals of the inhabitants of the spaces’ doors and windows depicted here. These items, performed as animated co protagonists, were either found there and displayed as documents (part a: the Tinian way to enrich their houses’ surfaces) or placed there in a staged way, according to a specific aspect they bear (part b: the Tinian emphasis on cuisine recipies; part c: the Tinian inclination to DIY tools for shaping building constructions) grounding humans to their earthly, eternally recycled, attributes. Accepting in this way their humble power over nature, god, fate, universal laws or anything else to which we the human beings, are asking for help.

Edition: 1/9
Artist: Vassilis Kantas
Year: 2025
Medium: Archival pigment print on premium matte paper, framed in black wood
Size: 21 × 29.7 cm

https://vassiliskantas.gr/