Eye on Leicester 50th Interview, May 2021

 

Eye On Leicester Questions 2021

Credited name and/or organisation?

George Sfougaras Artworks

Signing an edition of prints

What do you do?

 

I paint and print, write, research and sometimes make objects, automata and installations. There is no fixed technique or method of making, but in the last few years I have focused more on printing. Usually, being based in a studio upstairs at the Leicester print Workshop, I am able to use the large screen-printing table and the beautiful Columbia press, which allows me to make larger prints. As the lockdown has limited the possibilities and the use of equipment, I have shifted towards Lino and woodcut relief printing.  I have been working from home, which has been surprisingly not as difficult as I had first imagined.  Some years ago the loft was made into an extra room and that has been a life saver. Luckily too, my partner loves to see me making art around the house and so, it has been relatively easy. I have however missed the social aspects and relationships of the studio and the communal making at the Print Workshop.

As the lockdown progressed and hand printing became physically very demanding, I have added a couple of small presses to my home studio. I am always open to new possibilities and I think that is key to keeping us inventing and developing. I am the coordinator of a group of very talented artists and artivists from a number of countries, the Focus on Identity Collective. www.focusonidentity.com

 

How did you get to where you are?          

I was born in Crete. Both my parents’ families were displaced by war and an enforced population exchange in the 20s from what is now modern Turkey, but had been occupied since antiquity by Greek speaking peoples.  They escaped certain death and arrived in Greece in 1922, where they lived in refugee camps until they were processed and allowed to settle as Greek citizens.  My father’s parents both died when he was very young. His Father Nikolaos was a captain of a ship that carried grain from the Russia via Istanbul and the Gibraltar straights to Sweden. I traced his ship ‘Penelope’, which sank at Cape Bougarane off the coast of Algiers on the 28^th  April 1912.

The idea of the exchange process, was that the land you had lost in Asia Minor when you left was replaced by its equivalence in Greece.  As my father had lost both his parents he was not only stateless but also homeless.  It is a huge sense of pride and comfort to us all that he created a loving home and a thriving business when he was suffering inwardly from these experiences for most of his adult life. This was not really discussed very much at home, unless one listened very carefully to the adults talking when off guard. I think I picked up some of this background information as I lay in my bedroom which was near the kitchen and woke up slowly to the conversations of my beloved parents as they drank their morning Turkish (or Greek) coffee.  Greece was trying very hard to integrate the additional one and a half million refugees and become a cohesive nation state, and the ‘new arrivals’ were keen to fit in. I know now that at first it was not easy, but that later their immense contribution in all areas of the economic and social life of the country, led to a revitalisation of Greece, despite the upheaval of the ‘Asia Minor Catastrophe’. (Gibney & Hansen, 2005; Howland, 1926; Schaller & Zimmerer, 2008). [1] Travelling the other way some 300,000 Muslim people born and living in Greece were forcibly deported what is now Turkey. Many Greek Muslim citizens did not speak Turkish and they too suffered the same pains of acclimatisation into an unfamiliar and thus far unknown ‘motherland’. The exchange of populations used religion, not ethnicity as the defining marker of Greek and Turkish identities.

Smyrna on Fire in 1922.

Just before writing the above, I was listening to the news on Saturday 15^th May 2021 as displaced Palestinians were remembering their own losses, their own Nakba, or ‘catastrophe’.  I think the fact that the displaced Christian population of Turkey were given their own land in their ‘ancestral homeland’ of Greece (even though the majority had never been there before) meant that people like myself grew up in relative peace and comfort.

I think my parents as most people who survive trauma wanted to move on with their lives. It seemed to me growing up that Greece’s recent history had been hectic. In the 60s of my childhood war and loss were a common theme. In particular the other Great War and the German occupation which had left a huge emotional crater into the consciousness of the Cretan people. All around us growing up, in the media and cinema, the heroic but impoverished Greeks fought and won against all the odds against a greater foe. From Thermopylae to the German occupation the theme was the same: ‘Heroism overcomes might’.  These victories were not easy and often they were embittered by losses and the sacrifices. I am sighing as I write this, because I realise that all of the above, combined with Orthodox Christianity (with its own complex themes of death, resurrection and sacrifice) created a heady mix of narratives which I as a young and very sensitive child found hard to navigate.

We came to England in the 70s when the right wing military Junta were in power.  I recall as a child being marched in uniform surrounded by Greek flags and massive crowds as we lined the way for the arrival of the leaders of the Junta. (Fleischer, 2006, p. 237). I also recall the remonstrations of my mother when my socialist father spoke openly in public about the abuses of power of the regime. It was not a time for heroics my mother once said, because at any time someone could be imprisoned or internally exiled. Human rights atrocities, violence and disappearances of communists and other left-leaning individuals were commonplace. 

I remember that we had in our small library books which had been written by literary figures that had been prosecuted by the regime.  Possessing such items was prohibited and risky, yet I remember reading with great reverence the works of my favourite writer Menelaus Lountemis who was criminalised as an agitator and a communist and spent many years in exile in Romania. His book entitled ‘A Child Counts the Stars’ spoke of the way poverty created injustice, limited opportunities and created a cruel society. That book and the main character, a poor boy that loves to learn but cannot afford to attend school and works hard to save and access an educational system, defined my childhood more than any other.  It spoke to me of the increasing awareness of one’s place in the world; it spoke to me of a choice between standing up for those that are disadvantaged by a corrupt system or colluding with and accepting the status quo. To my young eyes, it seemed as clear as day and that feeling never really left me.  When my friends slept during siesta time in the summer, I read avidly this and many other classics of Greek, Russian and English literature.

Coming to England as a boy of 13 in the 70s was something unplanned and life defining.  My sister married a young man from Derby who was stationed in Crete as an engineer with the RAF. They asked me to come and stay with them one summer and I did.  This somewhat random event was followed by the family decision to leave Greece, selling up all our property and transferring our resources to the UK via Germany.  It is hard to imagine now, at a time of relative peace in Europe that less than 50 years ago, free movement  of funds was not possible and settlement in the UK was dependent on how much money you had at your disposal and whether you could prove that you were completely financially independent.  By 1972, only holders of work permits, or people with parents or grandparents born in the UK could gain entry – significantly reducing primary immigration from mainly Commonwealth countries (Brah, 1996). I think that since Brexit we are re-entering a period of restricted movement.  It is sadly a move towards a restrictive immigration policy shaped by unspoken deeply held racist attitudes. This is not exclusively a British thing. In Eastern Europe and in the country of my birth, Greece, similar and harsher restrictions exist on immigrants seeking work or asylum. Not to mention of course the fallout from the economic collapse and the rise of the right which have created particularly inhospitable environments for anyone escaping conflict and entering Europe through the Balkan Peninsula.

My brother and I with our wonderful Auntie Dimitra in the 1960s. Sadly she passed away shortly after I left Greece. 

At the time of my coming to Britain in 1973 I was just in my early teens and understandably quite naïve. I had always thought of myself as a ‘European’ but I soon realized that what I considered superficial differences in appearance were enough to identify me as an outsider, a ‘foreigner’.  You can read about this in my paper; ‘Who Do You Think You Are’ [2] for the Asia Triennial Manchester at the invitation of Alnoor Mitha, Senior Research Fellow in Asian Cultures at Manchester School of Art, and curator of the Anish Kapoor exhibition [3].

It was thus that my new designation of ‘the foreigner’ (plus other expletives and qualifiers) defined my adolescence. I was fortunate in that we had some resources and I was admitted into a lovely school, in Nottingham, where I made some good friends and where I began to realise that my circumstances had irrevocably changed.  My daily encounters with British people were defined by curiosity (‘I have never met a Greek before’ or ‘You look Italian’) or by hard to understand hostility. Once, I recall with dread and sadness, even unprovoked physical violence.  ‘You are lucky to be alive’ said the doctor who examined me at Queens Medical Centre. We lived for a while in the former mining area of Gedling in Nottingham in the mid-1970s, where being one of few ‘foreigners’ I experienced some of the worse racism of my life, from children, adults and from staff at the college I attended. 

Having subsequently been a teacher responsible for educating and protecting young people myself, I now look back at those days with immense sadness. I also feel at a loss to explain and understand the hate that I clearly inspired in people that I casually came across. People that I had never met before, who when I was with an English friend would be polite and deferential. My family, who were not physically identifiable as ‘other’, did not experience life in the same way.  I was grateful for that and in my young mind hurt at being the one ‘foreign’ looking one.  I am smiling sadly as I write this now, many years later. I feel stronger now, but the pain of that time has lodged somewhere within me, and I suspect it will always be there. I did not want to burden anyone with all this, and I was too hurt and embarrassed to admit it to my parents, so I just pretended it was not happening.  I think the more I denied the experiences, the more painful they became. I know now with hindsight that when exposed to such negative racist views, we can internalise them. Of course, the bad times were not the norm, and I was able to thrive academically and also in terms of my chosen career.

I have to acknowledge however, that those formative experiences and the way they revealed to me people’s capacity for inflicting emotional pain through racist words and actions, defined my late teens and early twenties. Later, they also enriched my life in unexpected ways. When I first started to teach, my experiences as an ‘outsider’ made me aware of tensions and challenges that young people from all backgrounds were facing.  I became privy to circumstances, feelings and political settings that I would never had experienced if I had not been through those tough years. I also started to see myself as I was: a mixture of cultures and genetic material; a man between Europe and Asia; someone who people found hard to define in terms of ‘race’. In the days that I felt good about myself, I saw that these qualities could be used to construct narratives that bridged our simple definitions of identity and belonging. And that is what my work became about. History and the present, human attitudes and intersections.

Seven years after entering the UK, I went on a foundation course in art and design at Trent University Nottingham.  This was after an attempt at following a career in County Hall as a civil servant and various other office jobs. I finished my degree in the same university and subsequently trained as a teacher. I was lucky to attend De Montfort when Professor Brian Allison was in charge of the Post Graduate Certificate in Education teaching programme. He was a global thinker and often brought in influencers and artists from various parts of the world. It was an idyllic opportunity but very demanding. Just as the course was coming to an end, I started to really love it, and gained a distinction which was really something at the time and helped me to find a job quickly. It opened up a new world of possibilities and blessed me with wonderful connections. I think often with great affection of Joyce Hudson, my wise tutor.  Bless you Joyce for your friendship and wisdom. Also, for making me feel that my experiences mattered and that they were precious and worth processing. Joyce also made me realise that if you have a positive effect in one person’s life that is a major life achievement.

I don’t think it was a conscious decision, but somehow I found myself always working in schools where there were social challenges.  Or rather all schools can be defined as such.  I was still at the time hopeful that I would eventually feel a sense of belonging and become integrated into a society that accepted and valued me, as a person.  That integration I now know is an internal phenomenon. This too is an aspect of my work. Creating a reality that is mine alone, but which I hope may be visible at some level to others.

Thirty years after qualifying, teaching art, creating materials for teachers, and managing departments, I found myself the head teacher of a multi-site special/hospital school. It was a magical, worthwhile job and it was hard to leave, but I felt that in all the preceding years it was my own work that somehow created the backdrop for my teaching. Often the ideas were taken on and realised by my students and that was very fulfilling, but, the time was right, I was still young and able to retire, so I made the decision. I have loved every minute of this new phase of my life.

I talked a lot about my feelings growing up, because in reality there is no boundary between that aspect of me and the way I make art. Perhaps this integration when complete, or rather further down the line will be the point at which I reach my mature voice as an artist.

 

 

 

 

Why do you love what you do?   

 

 

Most days it is very clear: if feels meaningful, playful, and wondrous. Art can create new worlds, new meanings but also open a new window on what we feel and what we know. It helps us to find out more and expands our emotional range.  It can communicate complex beliefs in a way that does not sound evangelical, rather opens up an internal dialogue in the viewer. When we look at a painting or sculpture, we delve deeper into our emotional range, we soften our focus and give up our search for absolutes. 

I am still filled with awe as I make something.  It is not about my own facility or how good the work is. It is not about the outcomes. It is that moment when something new is created.  A new entity enters the world and our understanding is nudged forward a few millimetres. For me art has been the wise counsel that, now that I think about it, in some ways replaced my parents.  It is my best inner voice.  It has helped me move forward, by giving me the time and the space to ask questions, look for answers and when feeling particularly brave, share them with others. I do not mean to say that I am shy about sharing my art. I share a lot of what I do through social media, but the truly convincing works, the ones that came from deep within full of conviction and in absolute honesty…well sharing those often involves risk. The moment when you make a piece of work that fills a void in you, is rare, but it happens. For some reason, others see that and engage with it differently. 

A version of my print ‘Hope’.

In 2015, I made a little print of a tree in a storm in a little boat.  It was a time when migrants fleeing war in Syria risked everything to reach safety in Europe and landed on the same little Greek islands that my parents escaped to in the 1920s. The simple image captured a moment for me and gave me the feeling that art could be both simple and powerful in unexpected ways. It won a prize, but more importantly it has become loved and used by many organisations and in literature and poetry as a poignant symbol of transition and hope. Most recently by ‘The Other Side of Hope’, a literary magazine that exists to serve, via words, the refugee and immigrant communities worldwide.  The composer Yvonne Bloor has written a musical composition inspired by the series of prints entitled ‘Hope Sets Sail’: https://yvonnebloor.com/recordings/

Art has also allowed me to make some significant contributions in ways that I had never foreseen and which have been immensely meaningful and fulfilling to me. A number of these have involved residencies in Jerusalem, Osnabrück and Crete, working with diverse communities and people that I would not have met otherwise. Some of my reconstructed maps and books documenting significant events have moved some readers to express their gratitude for this work. I had this kind of nourishing feedback throughout my career as a teacher and without wishing to sound pretentious I would say that teaching and making art can be transformational. I have treasured memories of the generosity of students, their words of spontaneous kindness, and colleagues whose wisdom support and encouragement sustained me for thirty years in the educational sector. They together with my family and their stories and living examples supplied me without any particular effort on my part a rich internal treasure trove of feelings and experiences that inform my ideas and my artwork. 

In 2020 just before the first lockdown I worked with acclaimed director Adina Tal.  The project ‘Grandmother Stories’ is a series of theatrical pieces by a group of Arab and Jewish Israeli women in Jerusalem; it recounts their memories and  their lives, showing the way they are interlinked in geography and in friendship, despite the political difficulties that define their daily existence. As I look back now, at this very moment when lives are lost through another conflict in Israel and Gaza, I feel very moved about that experience and very grateful that as an artist I was able to work with them in solidarity.  It is that belief that art can make a difference in extremely difficult circumstances that feels important and worthwhile.  I am calling on that memory in humility to help me to make good decisions about future projects and engagements with my own practice.

 

Why Leicester?

There is a cosmopolitan nature to Leicester that I find very inspirational and healing. Coming here in 1984 was a cultural experience that caused a personal shift.  I grew up in the predominantly working class, mono-cultural Nottingham of the 1970s and that experience was harsh.  I was not one to join the Greek community; rather I found friendships wherever I encountered progressive minds and people that had a wide, socialist world view that matched my own. Therefore in some ways I think I had moulded my identity order to create a new me, a George, rather than a Yiorgos. Although I did not fit in exactly, I was allowed to get on with my life.  I assimilated superficially, for convenience and peace of mind.  I did not want to have to deal with people’s questions about who and what I was and an easier anglicised name relieved me of that constant inconvenience. I think that coming to Leicester and experiencing the diversity that exists here, freed me up to look at myself anew. To reflect and embrace those aspects of my own culture that I had suppressed in order to fit in.  In a world where the main rhetoric about life focuses on difference, somehow Leicester had been able to focus on diversity and inclusion. It was not idyllic and I was acutely aware of the disparity and poverty in some of the communities here and of course of dissonance. Yes, there were issues, but look how far we have come and how comfortable it is to be in such a richly diverse environment.  I think living in Leicester is liberating and gives me hope for the future. Also, in a romanticised and edited version of history, perhaps I see in Leicester the cosmopolitan and vibrant Constantinople/Istanbul of my father’s stories. He used to recount with joy the way people coexisted in relative harmony, jostling along in packed markets in a multilingual, busy, oriental yet westernised metropolis. The history of Rome and Byzantium overlaid with the rich otherness of the Ottoman Empire creating a complexity that I find fascinating to this very day and which often surfaces in my work. In my Arts Council funded project with the ArtsReach organisation and Leicester Print Workshop in 2019, that layering of histories, meanings and visuals resulted in the Recovered Histories Exhibition, at Leicester’s LCB Centre. Layers of history and different narratives combined, surfaced and interplayed with light to reveal our shared complexity and common history as human beings.

 

What next?        

(This is your opportunity to plug, push, promote! An event? An exhibition? Your social channels? Are you looking for something? A connection to make?)

I am making more work than ever, releasing one limited edition of prints roughly every month at the moment, but I am also reflecting on direction rather than speed.

In terms of soon to come projects, I have a couple of diverse ones coming up.  They both build on earlier work and relationships established via residencies of publications. The first was to be installed in January 2021, but now it will be going up, all being well, in June 2021.  Both projects stem from my self-questioning when taking on something new. It is the ‘Why’ I am doing something, rather than the ‘How’ I am going to do it. As with the Jerusalem Project mentioned earlier (my first foray into film) I got involved in these projects because I believe in the causes they represent. 

                                      

Constructing the frame of the tent for an installation at Leicester Museum for June 2021

The first one which is being installed in early June and July 2021 is a commission that responds to the Leicester Museum exhibition of the painting ‘Thou shall not kill’ by Matheus Koetz. The Light in the Darkness Installation symbolises the fragility of life and the power of hope and remembrance. It comprises two installations of illuminated tents. One tent was originally intended to be exhibited at the Leicester Museum and the other at the Cathedral; the latter had to be subsequently rescheduled for the Great Meeting Unitarian Chapel in the City Centre. They speak of the common need for shelter by all exiled and displaced people and the duty to remember those that passed.  The photographs depict murdered Jewish and displaced people. Amongst those depicted are African, Armenian, and Greek people from Turkey. (The latter representing members of my family).  In the installation, the photographs appear and then fade as a searchlight casts them into sharp relief against the tent walls. The revolving light which is housed inside a 'black box’ records and exposes the sadness of the past but also illuminates the way to a better, more just tomorrow. The tents echo the refugee camps that housed my parents and the displaced people all over the world, as well as the temporary huts constructed for use during the week-long Jewish festival of Sukkot. The sukkah shelter symbolises the fragility and transience of life and dependence on the Almighty. 

The soundscape represents a soundtrack of past lives through many years and in many voices, heard incidentally and faintly, just as I heard my parents’ voices as I fell asleep and woke up in my childhood. The tents are the same as those used in refugee camps and made specifically by the manufacturers in China for this installation. The hope is that after the exhibition they will be used as intended as stores or shelters. They stand as symbols, monuments to lost homes and lives.   They reaffirm our commitment to justice for the persecuted and the displaced. Let us all work towards that.

 

The other is reinventing my art residency online following on from my physical one in Germany before the pandemic. I was privileged to be invited to work alongside academics and religious leaders that have come together yearly to maintain links between the Abrahamic religions after WWII. This will be the second time I have ‘resided’ virtually at Haus Ohrebeck in Osnabruck and I very much look forward to meeting some of the wonderful friends I have made over the last three years. 

 

Reader Recommendations?

(Ideally aim for 2-3 things. What would you recommend for our readers? This could be events, performances, books, plays, films, music. It could be what helps you, inspires you, and excites you. Past, present or future!)

 

‘A Swim in a Pond in the Rain’ by George Saunders. It is a book that has enabled me to reflect on what I do and how I think about the work’s meaning and purpose. Although it is about literature, I really loved the parallels with all the arts and it enabled me to look beyond the written word to the meaning intended by the writer and to the way art can only really come from the heart, if it is to mean anything. I think it resonated with me in ways that many books about art theory have not because of that last realisation.

For truly magnificent, incomparable research and breadth as well as detached and impartial scholarship, ‘Jerusalem: The Biography’ is a 2011 non-fiction book by British historian and writer Simon Sebag Montefiore. Drawing on new archives, current scholarship, his own family papers and a lifetime's study, Montefiore illustrates the essence of sanctity and mysticism, identity and empire in a historical chronicle of the city of Jerusalem. [4] What I love about that book apart from the brilliant handling of very difficult historical events, is the impartiality and love that emerges through the writer’s uncompromising search for the best version of the truth. A tough act, but inspirational.

 

I love Escher’s work and his creativity, but also Kathe Kollwitz. I sometimes think that owe my love of printmaking to them, even before I was fully aware of the genre and what it would mean for my work. The artists that inspire me are often quite understated.  I don’t think it is because of any modesty on my part, rather there is a beauty in the clarity of their limited palette of black and white. Of course the same simplicity cannot be ascribed to Albrecht Durer, yet his woodcuts and engravings are magical and a huge source of inspiration.

The thing that excites me is seeing how much creativity there is out there.  Instagram and Facebook are full of examples of art, and it often amazes me how many people are simply making things purely for pleasure or self-discovery. In the final analysis I think maybe that is the point of making anything.

Thank you for reading my thoughts and reflections.

George Sfougaras 2020.

 

References (Although not exclusive)

References

Brah, A. (1996). Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities London: Routledge.

Fleischer, H. (2006). Authoritarian Rule in Greece (1936–1974) and Its Heritage. In Totalitarian and authoritarian regimes in Europe: Legacies and lessons from the twentieth century. New York: Berghahn Books.

 Gibney, M. J., & Hansen, R. (Eds.). (2005). Immigration and Asylum: From 1900 to the Present. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.

Howland, C. P. (1926, July). Greece and Her Refugees. Foreign Affairs. Available at: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/greece/1926-07-01/greece-and-her-refugees

Schaller, D. J., & Zimmerer, J. (2008). Late Ottoman genocides: The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and Young Turkish population and extermination policies—introduction. Journal of Genocide Research, 10(1), 7–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623520801950820

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