The Paestum Collages

22 December 2024 – 15 February 2025

In the works on paper on view, titled The Paestum Collages that date from 2011 to 2012, Lijn explores the replacement of the sacred by the industrial.

With astonishment, while visiting Athens forty years after living there in the early ‘60s, Lijn discovered the development that had taken place on the Sacred Way, the road that connected the Temple of Athena with the site of ancient Eleusis.

The chimneys and the pollution now dominated what was once an idyllic landscape full of eucalyptus trees, lakes and endless beaches, the ideal beauty of a site connecting two sacred holy places, both dedicated to female goddesses.

Wisdom and fertility had been taken over by machines, lights, flames, roaring sounds of trucks and infected lungs of working men.

The artist got access to two major industrial complexes in the area (a refinery and a steel manufacturer) and generated a series of photos and videos there.

It was this material she mixed with prints of the famous etchings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi* of the doric Greek temples in the area of Salerno, south of Naples, known as Paestum, from which the series takes its name.

The result is a poetic symphony of images in juxtaposition that flow while varying from horizontal to geometrical, and at times an accidental mix of what feels disparate though melts together like the landscape.

In her words:

I was shocked and disgusted that Greece had neglected its ancient heritage so blatantly. More recently, however, I have become fascinated by the way in which industry seems often to position itself upon the very sites that were once sacred to men and women.

*Lijn received permission to use and make reproductions of the images from the Sir John Soane Museum in London.