The Expedition #17 is the second experiment by artist Georgia Kotretsos, it takes place as a research trip to explore the phenomenon of Phototropism applied to human movements and the relationship to the political status of natural elements.

What you see

Silence

What you hear

Desert

The intervention for HELP in the African desert by Georgia Kotretsos is part of a larger project looking at the human condition through absence of bodies and hyper presence of life. The artist started her journey from Athens to Casablanca, across the Mediterranean and through Atlas mountains towards the desert at the border between Algeria and Morocco. These passages are important routes for transcontinental immigration and other contemporary movements.

For this second episode, Georgia Kotretsos is using the popular carpet (hsira) found in the marketplace and made out of composite material reproducing traditional motifs, as the visual element in the landscape. The aesthetically rich landscape intentionally serves as a backdrop in opposition to the word HELP. Left as a trace - a collage in the landscape, it creates tension between what’s visible and the gesture’s immediate past documented with photography.

 also see Expedition 16 (Greece).