Produced between 2010 and 2012, the 1492 series draws its inspiration from tobacco and its cultivation in the Broye Valley (Switzerland) and Thrace (Greece) in 2013.
From the traditional tobacco sheds that have been established in Switzerland for three centuries to the modest homes of the Pomaks who grow tobacco north of Thessalonica, tobacco is grown here and there on family farms.
The hand of man reigns supreme in these works, which tend to sublimate both the material and the labor it represents.
Somewhere between abstraction and representation, this journey into the culture of tobacco, bears witness to the grandeur and harshness of human activity.
The 1492 series was presented at the SMCA Thessaloniki Biennial of Contemporary Art in 2014. The Museum of Contemporary Art of the city of Thessalonica has acquired the work, enriching its collection.
1492 n°I, 2012
125 x 185 cm
C-print, diasec
1492 n°XXIII, 2013
125 x 185 cm
C-print, diasec
1492 n°XXIX, 2013
125 x 185 cm
C-print, diasec
1492 n°XXVII, 2013
125 x 185 cm
C-print, diasec
1492 n°X, 2013
125 x 185 cm
C-print, diasec
1492 n°XXI, 2013
120 x 80 cm
C-print, diasec
1492 n°XX, 2013
125 x 185 cm
C-print, diasec
1492 n°XXV, 2013
80 x 120 cm
C-print, diasec
1492 n°XXIV, 2013
80 x 120 cm
C-print, diasec
1492 n°XXII, 2013
125 x 185 cm
C-print, diasec
1492 n°II, 2012
185 x 125 cm
C-print, diasec
1492 n°XXVI, 2013
120 x 80 cm
C-print, diasec
1492 n°III, 2013
125 x 185 cm
C-print, diasec
1492 n°VI, 2012
125 x 185 cm
C-print, diasec
1492 n°VII, 2012
125 x 185 cm
C-print, diasec
1492 n°IV, 2012
125 x 185 cm, diasec
1492 n°V, 2012
125 x 185 cm
C-print, diasec
“Then there is still here now : Vanna Karamaounas’s Serie 1492”
Vanna Karamaounas’s ever searching spirit for discovering the marginalized and the many faces of the rural led her to explore the regions of the tobacco cultivation in Thrace in Northeast Greece. The analogue photographs of her Serie 1492 were taken on the area’s mountains and in the houses of the Pomaks, as well as in several abandoned factories in Xanthi. These works celebrate the magic of the purely photographic, raising aesthetic inquiries through a journey on social, humanistic and geographical terrains. An innate play between the material and spiritual worlds becomes apparent, as the stacks of tobacco leaves exhibit strongly the “architectural” and “corporeal” aspect of their formations, acting at the same time as vehicles of spirits that connect the immaterial with the physical, the basic with the sacred. The tobacco leaves seem to transcend their organic nature becoming symbols of human labour and draw the viewer’s attention to this fragmented microcosm of peripheral lived life.
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The artist avoids giving her works a specific personal critical viewpoint, blurring the boundaries between interpretation and objective documentation and allowing the weightless poetic silence of the images themselves to take over.
Clear structures contrast with strong colours, time is juxtaposed with space, everyday simplicity mingles with a breath of lyricism, transience co-exists with permanence, but the final overall impression is one of a natural symbiosis between the constituent visible and invisible parts of the photographs. A direct evocation of emotions is caused by the ambivalent atmosphere of a decaying environment with its deserted remnants and at the same time the existence of traces of life within this odd scenery.
Vanna Karamaounas’s photograghs of Serie 1492 are genuine responses to the peculiar and silent beauty of the specific settings and reveal the artist’s distinct artistic aim that is characterized by precise observation, truthfulness and a respectful attitude towards the tobacco farmers, their work and surroundings.
Vassiliki Athena Vayenou, art historian, Athens 2013