The Collector

“Don’t be fooled!” says Themis.

“The collection might seem old, but it only came together in the last twenty years, when I moved to the apartment and began visiting the flea markets. ​Obviously, it was in the making for much longer. My strolls in the city center as a kid, my fascination with the shop windows, my visit to Hera Triantaphyllides​’ pottery studio in Marousi and her monster-like figures, or my time in Italy, when I was supposedly studying architecture, but in reality I was travelling and meeting people​—all that had something to do with its making. ​​In the beginning I would search for rare and out-of-print books​, Hera’s pottery and its imitations, and, somehow along the way, I came to appreciate objects that no one else would love: ​cheap and awfully clumsy​ curios, handicrafts​, and art from the time Greece began to emerge as a tourist destination​. ​These items have now found their place in the apartment, the living room, the kitchen, the study, the hallway, the bedroom, and the bathroom, where they live together with my friend’s Elias’ [Papailiakis] paintings, paintings and drawings that belonged to the family [by Giorgio de Chirico, Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas, Theophilos, and Spyros Papaloukas], my books, and furniture…. If you look closer you’ll see that I’m still a kid, that rooms have themes (dragons, lions, lobsters), and that I love Christmas, when all my friends gather with their children and we decorate the tree…. I could stay in the apartment forever, but friends often insist that I go out with them, and I do. People visit me too. Curators planning new exhibitions, academics, and younger people from the [LGBTQ+] community to discuss shows, visibility, Greece. On my Facebook page I present art​, which I search for hours on end…

…every home is a museum. Every object, in a strange way, can tell the story of the whole world.”