Katerina Kaloudi.
“Emptying my parents’ house”.
“Emptying my parents’ house” is a series of photographic works that emerged and was completed while the artist was emptying her parents’ house, after her mother’s passing. The collection of images relates to the psychological and practical process that we all are called upon to face at one point or another in our lives. For those who have not yet passed through it, this arduous process looms ahead.
The process of emptying her family home elicited a storm of emotions, became part of her self-analysis and a retrospective of her life and the life of her parents and her ancestors.
Her need to manage grief, to be in touch with her vulnerable feelings and to look back into the family’s past, coinciding with the coronavirus pandemic that gifted her with an unexpectedly generous period of time, propelled Katerina Kaloudi to transform the dining room of the parental house into a photographic studio and create images with the objects, fabrics, clothing, old photographs, memories, family stories and her own imaginary, internal conversations.
The creation of these works transformed the whole internal and external process of emptying the house and gave her both the fortitude and the means to more deeply recognize her connection with those who came before her, to honour them, thank them and forgive them… and, to take another step towards setting herself free.
The work presented here runs along two threads. One is the photographic dialogue between artist and object; the other is a sentimental dialogue of an individual’s reaching her
Each path is invisible and the two are rendered as one.