The Exchange at Hania

While I have been working with people in community and educational settings for five years, the opportunity in Hania, has enabled me to relate engaging with others more closely with my own practice as an artist.   Rather than simply using my creative skills as a facilitator, the people I met, photographed and conversed with and my interaction with them, have become a compelling dialogue which is now at the heart of some new work.

Hania, was much more multi-cultural than I expected.  I researched its history which is what initially drew me to that location, however it was the presence of many people from different cultural backgrounds I met there, which surprised me.  It seems a natural gravitational place for this, as I met people who live there from France, Canada, Lebanon, America, England, Denmark, Syria, Albania and Germany as well as native Cretans and those from all over Greece.  What I discovered was people who were friendly and loved to talk and share stories.

I discovered a new role for myself as an artist engaging with others, which on my visit I termed as a ‘Story-Hunter’.  My challenge now is how I communicate the varied stories that I collected, in a way that reflects the open and honest manner in which the details of people’s lives were shared with me, and how I intermingle my own creativity into that dynamic.  It’s really changed my perception of myself as an artist, and it’s raised a lot of questions, which will take me sometime to explore, which I am really happy about.

I believe we need constant challenges as artists, to feel truly in touch with what drives us individually and our sometimes disparate connections to others, and to date this has been the best opportunity for me to explore this more fully.  It may seem overly dramatic to say that this opportunity ‘blew my mind’, but while in Hania I could feel little explosions of creativity were going off in my head, which were both exciting but also perplexing.  I feel that I’m just at the beginning of a new journey; one where I really have little idea of the destination.  It’s a position that I really value, one where I am taking a few risks, which is essential for any artist’s future development.

JO LÖKI (pictured right)
An installation artist, Jo works with text, visual imagery and visual objects, which she uses to create three-dimensional stories.   She uses a broad range of materials and skills - drawing, painting, embroidery, writing, photography, print, text, book-making and multi-media - in order to create plausible stories and characters, who inhabit an imaginary lives.