Animal Splendour

Animal motifs—both real and mythical, existing and imagined—dominate the golden jewelry of Elena Syraka, while wondrous creatures come to life through a series of photographs captured by Nikolas Lotsos in the African savannas. The exhibition Animal Splendour, curated by Eleni Varopoulou and hosted at Gallery Kourd, explores the coexistence of two distinct artistic forms: photography and handcrafted jewelry.

The exhibition gazes toward the wild, where animals exist as free beings in their authentic environment, but also toward their symbolic, metaphorical, and allegorical forms—rendered tangible through the artistry of Joaillerie. Both the photographer’s lens and the jeweler’s craftsmanship illuminate the majesty of these creatures: Lotsos’ keen eye immortalizes them on film, while Syraka encases their forms in radiant gold, adorning them with sparkling diamonds and fiery rubies.

For millennia, animals—with their extraordinary abilities, immense power, and unparalleled grace—have captivated, inspired, and even haunted human imagination. Their existence has been marked by trials: hunted, sacrificed, captured, dominated, reduced to trophies, symbols of status, ornaments, or everyday objects. John Berger’s seminal essay Why Look at Animals? (1977) examines the evolving gaze of humans upon animals, discussing how, during the rise of industrial capitalism, animals were increasingly marginalized—confined to zoos and stripped of their once-deep cultural presence.

In Animal Splendour, the beasts of Lotsos’ photographs serve as echoes of reality—traces of Africa’s living fauna fixed on paper. But how “real” can nature remain when transposed into the intangible realm of an image, when the camera arrests motion and reveals what often escapes the naked eye?

Syraka’s golden jewelry, on the other hand, draws upon the mythological identities that animals held within prehistoric and historical civilizations—when their presence was so awe-inspiring that early humans etched them onto cave walls, when they embodied legends, acted as intermediaries between gods and mortals, and between earth and stars. These recollections of animal grandeur are intangible, yet in Syraka’s intricate gold pieces, they take on volume, shape, and palpable form. The very materials—precious minerals extracted from the depths of the earth—speak to a world both raw and refined, where nature and craftsmanship intertwine.

Our contemporary gaze upon animals is shifting, as is the very language we use to speak of them. Taking this evolution as its starting point—and embracing the notion that humans are not the sole measure of the animal kingdom—Animal Splendour invites visitors to reflect not only on how we look at animals but also on how animals, in turn, might look back at us.

ELENI VAROPOULOU

Kourd Gallery
4, Kassianis str., 114 71, Athens, Greece.

26.02 – 26.04.2025
Tuesday to Friday 12.00 – 20.00
Saturday 11.00 – 15.00