Prayers and Memories

"Marilia Fotopoulou, as a painter and a photographer, is a faithful of the image. She locates in the small spaces of faith and worship, in Orthodox, abandoned or not, churches the spaces of contemplation and pilgrimage, the church icons, the silence and the light, the shell for her own compositions, her own photographs – paintings. She meets the photo with sensitivity, persistence, geometry and rigor of the frame as her equipment. She concentrates on perspective, to see a different light on the church board, to bring out the soul of the premises and structure, as she does with the rest of her work, too. Converts the tableau of the churches to backgrounds of contingent photographic installations. She rests upon them a big cross, or a piece of marble on the floor. She moves easily from tight frames, to spread out details when she emphasizes, for example, on a red tablecloth, that connects two identical and two different elements at the same time. In her external images, free from the strict architectural elements of the church, she uses a foliage to construct her own tableau. She retains the symmetry, the interior light, the flame of the candle and the gold of the religious frames in the countryside. She coordinates the religious symbols, the tombs, the stacked marbles, the romanticism, the melancholy. She adds her own time to the images." Manolis Baboussis