Eden: Lost Coordinates, Platforms Project, Athens 2025

When curator Julia Sysalova first shared the concept of Eden: Lost Coordinates (click here to read about other artists), it immediately resonated with me. The idea of paradise as something imagined rather than found — and of our constant search for belonging — became the foundation for two works I created for this exhibition: False Horizons and Fossilized Dreams.

Eden is not a place on a geographical map but an imagined point of orientation towards which humanity has aspired for centuries. Time and again, people sought to construct a “garden of perfection”, a space of harmony with nature and with oneself.

Yet each attempt dissolved into a mirage, leaving only an imprint within our cultural memory.

Today, amid climate crises, political upheavals and digital transformations, the idea of Eden continues to endure, taking on new forms. It emerges in exclusive clubs, artificial oases and metaverses, spaces where the promise of refuge turns into a system of privilege and exclusion.

The artists of Eden: Lost Coordinates investigate the mechanisms through which our society repeatedly resurrects this myth, whether within social structures or as a reflection of individual paths.

They do not invite us to search for paradise. Instead, the project reveals that the Odyssey is already being written in every choice we make and in every trace we leave upon the earth.

Julia Sysalova

Curator, Critic – AICA Member

Vice President, IMC-Institute of the Mediterranean Culture

Research Fellow, ECI-European Communication Institute