“I participated,” says Alexandros Moraitidis, “in all his holidays and festivals.” In his native Skiathos, he attended the litanies and dances, because “in his ancient dance he was attracted by the indescribable originality of Kamaran”. There he walked and breathed in “bays and harbors,” “mountaintops,” “woods and valleys,” wooded places and seashores, where “every bough of bramble or pine” confided to him “an old story and every harbor” “and fairy tale”. In the desolate parts of his beloved island, he stayed in humble chapels that “alive” “greeted” him and said, “Welcome to us. Welcome to us.” He wrote stories about his place, but also about the deserts scattered around him, each of which “knows how to tell a story, a shipwreck, an accident, a ‘minute of breeze’.”
However, his deep desire, these imprints of his calculations and diving writings, to cross the borders of Skiathos, to capture and transmit a universal and also spiritually unenslaved Greek, the author expresses in simple terms, explaining that he would like his writings to be “not simply Greek, but ethnic ” nature, include his stories in “Genos ikones ke indalmata” so that they form the elements of the collective memory of the era “when our country had no elements of culture other than faith and belief. customs “:
The exhibition “Images and Symbols”, responding to this desire and following the previous honorable and excellent collaborations with the Municipality of Skiathos, was created as an attempt to vividly trace the life and work of the “other” Alexander. Papadiamantis’ third cousin, the leading, though lesser-known, Greek writer Alexandros Moraitidis. It is presented in the summer of 2024 in Skiathos, in the iconic House-Museum of Alexandros Papadiamantis and in an important new addition to the cultural map of the island, the House-Museum of the writer Zisis Oikonomou. Paying tribute to this important idea of Skiathos.
Within the framework of the exhibition, prominent Greek visual artists were invited, who, exploring ancient thoughts, scriptures and images, created moving new ones, moving into an organic dialogue with historical, spiritual, landscape and symbolic multi-level visual references. life, state of mind and ergography of the writer. And with his beloved homeland, the island of Skiathos, with Mount Athos, where he worshiped and believed, and with Athens, where he lived and worked, as well as with Greater Greece, which he visited with awe. Valuable traces of his calculation and life form and constitute the personal secret corpus of “Images and Symbols”. Moraitidis’ inseparable and indivisible physical and metaphysical universe.
Alexandros Moraitidis, later the monk Andronikos, dabbled in all literary genres of his time, from poetry and ecclesiastical poetry to short story, novel, travel, and theater. His short stories are inspired by intense religiosity, but also by love for everything small and wonderful in the natural world around him. He and his wife, Vasiliki Foulakis, met during their spiritual quest and lived a life of “virginity” before becoming monks, following the example of the lives of Saints Andronikos and Athanasius. Nurtured by the religious tradition of Skiathos, influenced by the spiritual origins of the Kolivades, Alexandros Moraitidis, deeply religious, was also a lover of tradition, recording in his writings the customs of his homeland, but also the customs, manners, but also the spiritual personalities he met in the centers of orthodoxy. during his travels in and around Constantinople, Smyrna, Palestine, and Mount Athos.
A common finding during the preparation of the exhibition was the lack of an up-to-date bibliography and recent editions of his work, a lack that is not in keeping with Moraitidis’s versatile writing and translation size, which was already awarded the Excellence in 1914. of letters and art.
The present iconic visual tribute to Alexander Moraitidis, the “other” Alexander, is excited by all of us, but above all by the municipality and the people of Skiathos, who had a great initiative and embraced the experience. Let it be a small beginning, so that the spiritual mark that he left on his time and on his literary work will emerge and shine again.
The exhibition “Images and Symbols”A modular psychological and topographical visual story about Alexandros Moraitidis set in the author’s birthplace, organized by Skiathos Municipality and edited by Iris Kritikou, featuring fifty-four prominent visual artists from Skiathos and the rest of Greece. it is featured in the Okia-Alexandros Papadiamantis Museum and the House-Museum of the Life of Zisi Economou. It is the curator’s fourth collaboration with the Municipality of Skiathos dedicated to the island, following the “First Flag” exhibition, presented in June 2021 at the Annunciation Monastery to mark the 200th anniversary of its launch. Greece’s struggle for independence, The Other Thalassa, presented in June 2022 at the Museum of Maritime Tradition in Skiathos, the 100th anniversary of the Asia Minor disaster and Alexander Papadiamantis’ modular visual tribute Born c. Skiathos”, presented from July to November 2023 at the Alexander Papadiamanti House-Museum and other iconic landmarks and museums of the island.
Participants of the exhibition.
Marina Vlahaki, Irini Vogiatsi, Nektaria Giacmoglidou, Fanis Gulis, Katerina Grafanaki, Panagiotis Daramaras, Elisavet Derveni, Dikaia Despotaki, Kostis Zouchas, Vasiliki Iliakopoulou, Apostolis Itskoudis, Maria Kalantsi, Despina Kalavina, Despina Kalina Georgia Kokkini Kordis, Maria Cosmidou, Paraskevi Koutombas, Tassos Liakopoulos, Lidia Margaroni, Sisi Marinou, Despina Mitzelou, Yotis Balodimos, Manos Batsolis, Mantos Bozoris, Mary Dagiantasi, Papadomaos, Isabella Nee, Christina Papatheou, Dimitris Papanikolaou, Christina Partra, Babis Pilarinos, Alexandra Rigana -Kariofia, Aphrodite Siasenia, Zoe Sieklis, Anastasia-Zoe Souliotou, Anastasia Athatou, Marina Stellatou, Ioanna Terlidou, Nikos Triantafilou, Athena Hatsi.
The exhibition was organized by the Municipality of Skiathos.
On the occasion of the exhibition, the eponymous album developed by Nikos Leontopoulos and texts by Todoris Tsoumas, Dimarchos Skiatos, Nikos Vatopoulos, journalist-author, Konstantinos Koutoubas, theologian-iconographer-professor of Byzantine music and Iris Kretikos, art. Exhibition of historians and curators.
Parallel activities and educational programs are planned within the framework of the exhibition.