“Believing in the revealing nature of art, by a fortunate chance I was led to learn about the significant educational and initiatory rite concerning the Eleusinian Mysteries.”
“I want to clarify that my own journey into the ancient Greek experience is not a return backward, but a return inward,” the internationally acclaimed visual artist Vana Xenou shares with elculture. We became initiates in her multi-layered artistic work last spring at the impressive and imposing “Mystery 15 The Open Museum” in Elefsina. Vana Xenou is the artist whose name is connected with the Eleusinian Mysteries more than any other. Her encounter with the myth, the ritual, the symbols, and the Mysteries was pivotal for her work. The ancient sculptures, the Parthenon friezes, the answers she found, or rather, the impetus fueled by her literary “encounters” in the books of Nietzsche, Karl Kerényi, Nikos Gabriel Pentzikis, and Heiner Müller, constitute the basic elements of Vana Xenou’s spiritual, philosophical first, and then visual world.
