In the project Newland, Georgia Damopoulou, inspired by James G. Ballard's narratives in his work The Crystal World (1966), creates and embodies the role of scientific artistic expeditor Dr. Isabel Blacksmith. In a tale inspired by the hyper-reality experienced by modern man through a sequence of catastrophic events, as well as the need to maintain a relationship and balance between himself and nature, the heroine finds shelter in plastic version of the rainforests. Where a symbiotic organism plasticizes all vital existence, where the organic succumbs to the inorganic, a kind of different immortality, which abolishes time, cognition and identity, thrives.

The artist, through her artworks, reveals how she experiences inspiration. The artistic escape that activates her imagination combined with the rhythmic writing, challenges the gaze to wander in that plastic world, through the paths of dense flora, excessive vegetation and echoing tropical sounds that with their charm enchant you and encourage you to accept that new Eden while moving towards a potential destruction.

Georgia Damopoulou, inspired by the Theatre of the Absurd, transforms the plant and animal kingdoms into an unfamiliar, synthetic environment. Just like Ionesco, she reverses the terms of the narrative. In Newland, it is not humans who are transformed into rhinoceroses, but the human environment itself. The artist creates a reality where, humans do not mutate into strange creatures, even though the earthly environment remains the same, but rather begins a never-ending mutation of the familiar environment into a system of plastic materials that increasingly constricts and assimilates humans. Newland is a synthetic earth whose materials are nothing but resins, silicones, zip-ties, pvc, adhesives and plastic threads, materials that silently and insidiously take over the space like Lynda Benglis' artworks. An initially inhospitable space, hermetically sealed, without a trace of familiar plants and animals with which man has hitherto coexisted, opens in front of him. What will that new condition bring? Will man survive? Will he adapt? Will he be able to thrive again?

Yes, the artist says. The created surrounding space is full of colours, soft textures and compositions that invite man’s touch and create new conditions ofcoexistence and evolution within it. The images created in Newland are reminiscent of the illusion of Heaven, where man wanders around enchanted, like Alice in Wonderland.

Marina Athanasiadou, Porto, 2023
Marialena Christodoulou, Athens, 2023