Vinyl Euripides, 2022

adhesive vinyl on glass

An adhesive vinyl installation based on Greek-Cypriot film director Michael Cacoyannis’ cinematic retelling of three tragedies by Euripides. The Trojan Women (1971) dwells on the enslavement of the women of Troy after the destruction of their city. In Electra (1962), the murder of victorious Agamemnon after his return from Troy unleashes a chain reaction of violent revenge. Iphigenia (1977) explores the prequel to the war, Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter to expedite the sailing of his bloodthirsty invasion force. By following Cacoyannis’ adaptations, I am building on a long history of restaging these narratives to examine the human suffering caused by war and the arrogant abuse of power, the vulnerability of migration and the misery of exile, dilemmas with direct analogues in the US today, as in Greece, on the front lines of migration from brutal conflicts in Syria and Iraq. My installation covers three floors of glass balustrades overlooking their central atrium as well as selected exterior windows, using hybridized fragments of objects and images from both ancient Greece and our modern world to reframe these narratives for a contemporary context.