Water, Memory & Landscape
Research, paintings, installations and field observations by Yanis Zagorianakos
For the last twenty-five years, I have lived on the islands of Kea, Amorgos and Aegina, they have been my teachers. Carrying water, walking old paths, recording seasonal changes and returning year after year, I have developed an artistic practice exploring the relationship between water, memory and landscape.
Living in Amorgos for long periods over 20 years, in a remote location , with no electricity and no running water but a cistern, has shaped an ongoing artistic inquiry into how water connects people, places and ecological systems across time.
My work combines painting, drawing, installation, sound, collected materials and field observation.
Rather than approaching water as a symbol alone, I see it as a living presence that carries stories, traces of human activity and records of environmental change.
Through long walks, conversations, recordings, mapping, collecting and making, I explore how landscapes remember and how water acts as a vessel through which memory moves between people, places and generations.
Projects
Mnemosyne
Listening Waters
Mnemosyne is an island-wide project unfolding across Amorgos through a series of interconnected exhibitions, installations, performances and research-based works.
Developed from more than twenty years of returning to the island, the project explores how water, memory and landscape become intertwined. Springs, wells, coastlines, abandoned settlements, local stories and personal experiences form a network of relationships through which the island can be understood not only as geography, but as a living archive.
The project brings together artists working across painting, ceramics, sound, movement, installation and performance, creating a dialogue between ecological processes, cultural memory and contemporary artistic practice.
Listening Waters explores water as teacher, material and collaborator. Through attentive observation, recording, movement and artistic practice, the project seeks to cultivate a deeper relationship with the environments that sustain us and to explore how water shapes perception, creativity and belonging.
Field Studies
About Yanis Zagorianakos
Yanis Zagorianakos is a Greek artist whose practice explores water, memory, landscape and time through painting, installation, sound and field observation.
For more than twenty-five years he has lived and worked between the islands of Kea, Amorgos and Aegina, developing projects rooted in long-term engagement with place, ecology and cultural memory.
His current research focuses on water, island ecologies, traditional water systems and the relationship between landscape and human experience.
Education Bsc Chemistry The City University London UK.
Full time crafter, artist, researcher, facilitator for the last 30 years
for more see www.yzagor.co.uk
Contact : yzagor@gmail.com
@All Rights Reserved/Ioannis Zagorianakos/Yzagor
