Cristina Mejías
You Can’t Leave Fingerprints on Stone
After Wheeler2018-20
Metal mesh, goat horn from Gavdos
80 x 100 x 70 cm
These pieces are part of the project You Can’t Leave
Fingerprints on Stone, presented at the Blueproject
Foundation in 2020. It emerged from a collaboration with
archaeologist and performer Efthimis Theou. Its starting
point was a stay on the island of Gavdos (Crete), located
at the southernmost point of Europe. During the summer
of 2017, I joined a team of archaeologists and locals to
participate, through my artistic research, in the excavation
of the Katalymata site. This research proposes an approach
to the archaeological object as a hybrid space in which
historical events and contemporary cultural production
are intertwined, thanks to a continuous symbiosis between
what the rock tells us and what the narratives of the
local people who inhabit the island and coexist with the
excavation tell us.
The pieces produced from 2018 to the present trace a map
or a labyrinth of that journey, depending on whether the
viewer wants to lose themselves or find themselves within
them.