The words "ΣΠΙΡΤΑ" and "ΠΑΤΡΙΣ" consist of the same letters in Greek. The first means matches and the second homeland. One is the anagram of the other. Manufactured borders on both the physical and the social level give rise to a sense of necessity and security. Sometimes visible, some others invisible they're always inaccessible. Those borders define or build our homeland. But how profoundly do they separate us from the mass? Here lies the paradox that presents the substance of these two words.
On the one hand, "ΠΑΤΡΙΣ" (Motherland) a standard word that creates an abiding identity and on the other, "ΣΠΙΡΤΑ" (matches) which denotes a mutable object that melts when catches fire. My way of thinking concerns the borders of self more than the borders of a country, even if this performance took place close to "Triethnes", a region in Prespes, Greece between three different countries (Greece, Albania, FYROM).
I searched for a place in the area covered in wet soil and there I marked my borders. I used matches to form a circle all around me, I squatted and lit the matches. They burned and with them the "borders" of my home (self) also went.
PROJECT “ΠΑΤΡΙΣ_ΣΠΙΡΤΑ”, 2012
