Larissa Araz: The Lost Reference List

Photo: On Urban Memory: The Eleonora Arhelaou Archive SALT.

How can we remember things that were forced on us to forget?

Eleni İliadis (1895–1975), İvi Stangali (1922–1999), and Eleonora Arhelaou (1937–2021) are three Rum women artists from Turkey, who lived between the end of the Ottoman Empire and the early years of the Turkish Republic. These women were either forced to exile or left İstanbul, Turkey to Athens, Greece. Soon enough their exile becomes a limbo and their stories have left to their oblivion. Due to Turkey’s identity politics towards non-muslim minorities (Greeks, Jews, Armenians, and Assyrians) and patriarchal approach to art, the names of these women have been left to erasure in Turkey’s art history canon.

From a revisionist and a feminist perspective, the project is in search of these erasures of history. The title of the work stems from an effort to create an abstract reference list of these erasures. As the archives in Turkey are confronted with many problems, I would like to search for the presence of these three artists in Athens.

Photo: Pavlos Fysakis

Creator's Note

As I waited under the air conditioning in the archives, shielding myself from the early, burning heat of Athens, I found myself contemplating how my own artworks might one day transform into archival material. I had come to Athens to investigate the presence of three Rum women artists from Turkey, but what I found here was not much different from what I had seen in Istanbul: they were nearly absent.Three significant encounters profoundly altered my perspective. The first was meeting Maya Stangali, the daughter of artist Ivi Stangali. Through our 2 to 3-hour conversation, I gained a deeper understanding of Ivi’s heartbreak after arriving in Athens. I saw more clearly the rifts created by migration and heard the silence of both the city that expelled her and the city that reluctantly took her in. Τhe Onassis AiR Open Day was Ivi Stangali’s first time showing in Athens.

Another pivotal encounter was with Dimitris Kamouzis, an Onassis Fellow and researcher at the Center for Asia Minor Studies. After a detailed discussion on the foundation of the Center for Asia Minor Studies and its functioning post-1922 migration, Dimitris assisted me in tracing the remnants of Eleni Iliadis in various archives. When I asked him why he was personally invested in this subject, he simply said, “My family was from Urla too”.

My final significant meeting took place at ISET (Contemporary Greek Art Institute), where Eva Vaslamatzi and I visited to research the works of Eleonora Arhelaou. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I couldn’t proceed without translation. The small talk we engaged in with the staff helped fill the gaps left by the archives. By the end of the day, it became clear that the witnesses to the artist and their practice – whose presence I tried to imagine from an old exhibition invitation – were actually the ones forming the archive.

The archive at ISET holds a much deeper meaning than just tracking the records of known classical artists. For many Greek artists on the brink of being forgotten due to migrations, juntas, and other troubling reasons, this archive is crucial. The two-month research felt like merely scratching the surface. As this phase concluded, I was left with thousands of questions and a deep sense of melancholy. I will continue the remaining part of this research process in both Istanbul and Athens.