Yannis Psychopedis: “We live in an abandoned and shattered Athens.”

The Athenian artist recounts his life to LIFO and Yannis Pantazopoulos on the occasion of the publication of his book *At the Bottom of Dreams*—Images from Andreas Embeirikos’s Octana, as well as his exhibition at the Zoumboulakis Gallery (open until Saturday 31 March). You can read an excerpt below: Photo: Paris Tavitian/LIFO I was born in Athens in 1945. Our family home was at number 23 Ypsilantou Street in Kolonaki. This large house, which has now been demolished, was a paradise of childhood adventure and exploration, full of dark corners, hidden spaces and a large, winding wooden staircase connecting the floors. It was a staircase where, at every turn, strange sounds, whispers, anxieties and fears from our childhood imaginations lurked. I grew up with parents who loved poetry and literature dearly. They had a natural affinity for the arts, and all that richness was passed on to us, without ever being imposed on us as an obligation. My mother was a teacher and my father a lawyer. So, our home was a place of ideas and reading was a matter of course. From my early secondary school years, I had made it clear what I would do in life and what I would pursue. Perhaps it is an inexplicable instinct that leads you to ‘something’. I studied printmaking at the Athens School of Fine Arts and then painting on a German government scholarship at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. However, I believe that talent only exists through hard work. One may possess the raw power that guides one towards the bigger picture, but in order for this to become conscious, a framework, an environment and a culture are needed. During my childhood and teenage years, I travelled extensively in Germany. Memories of many childhood summers are linked to that country. I had experiences that connected me to a civilisation and a culture that helped shape my identity. Later, from 1977 to 1986, I lived in Berlin, whilst until 1992 I lived and worked in Brussels.Ypsilantou Street, in its extension, connected the ‘cultured’ Kolonaki with the magical, fairy-tale world of Evangelismos Park, where, amidst the green flowerbeds and statues, Vasilis, the photographer. A beloved guardian of black-and-white memories, surrounded by photographs, negatives and posed shots on painted backdrops or against a flower-filled backdrop for the secret romances of conscripts on leave with the maids from the neighbouring houses.The balconies of our house looked out directly onto the British Embassy and its gardens. In the summers, we watched from above the open-air receptions, the arrivals of dignitaries in their evening gowns and tailcoats amongst the palm trees, like scenes from the mythical sequences of the first colour films. For years we believed that the British ambassador was none other than the dapper man in the gold uniform. Much later it was revealed to us that, despite all his pomp, he was merely a driver, and the real ambassador was the seemingly insignificant, grey little man who accompanied him. It was a discrepancy that proved significant for my subsequent understanding of the world. And this became most apparent during my school years, when, from a tender age, I had become involved in a romantic relationship with the young daughter of the embassy driver, who also lived in the staff quarters.The revelation of the true roles and identities of the individuals brought us down to earth with a bump, into a reality where, through the harshness of romantic rejection, we learnt relatively early on the complex relationship between being and appearing, between the obvious and the obscured truth of the world, between overt and covert social power. In the corner of our house, Ypsilantou and Loukianou, in the square by the British Embassy, our political consciousness first awoke when, overnight, the lower section of Loukianou Street suddenly changed its name and was renamed Karaoli-Dimitriou. Further up, next to the little dairy in Lykovrysi, on the upper side of Kolonaki Square, stood the mysterious figure of an elderly man who sat, come winter or summer, on a small wooden box. He sold precious treasures from our childhood reading world, such as second-hand issues of ‘Little Heroes’. This legendary man reminded me of a work by Magritte: a seated male figure wearing a hat, through the open collar of which you can see, in place of his body, a cage with a bird. Read the rest here.