For the duration of the exhibition, Greek artist  Alexandros Georgiou has installed a painting studio in the Museum’s Café, where twice a week he invites visitors to bring over their pets so he can paint their portraits, highlighting their personhood individual personalities, as with human portraiture. 

As the artist says: “In Hindu philosophy, animals and humans share the same soul, and after countless reincarnations as different animals we eventually evolve to humans, but then we may at any time revert back to being reborn as an animal, depending on karma. When I was in India, I started looking at animals that I lived with, through that idea of a hidden karmic relationship. While working on portraits of humans during an exhibition last year, I noticed that I was more interested in creating ‘soul portraits’, portraits that went deeper than a realistic representation and somehow attempted to reveal the psyche of the individual, as I saw it with my eyes the moment we met. For the exhibition, I really wanted to continue that practice of live portrait making to include animals and look at them just the way I saw people”.

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For Alexandros Georgiou, travelling is not only a source of inspiration but also an essential part of his artistic practice. Through text and imagery Georgiou captures more than just glimpses of the places he visits – indeed, he creates a poetic and highly personal version of those places, a reality that hovers in between the visible and the hidden, the material and the spiritual. Georgiou takes note of what is usually shielded from view or simply ignored or deemed invisible – in this case, animals: the silent witnesses to the world we share with them. 

His photographs, taken in India and South East Asia, photocopied and painted over with a yellow fluorescent marker pen and colouring pencils, highlight the fine line that divides presence from absence. Sacred cows, pigs used as means of waste management, trucks loaded with chickens, Georgiou’s images expose man’s ambiguous attitude towards animals, at times objects of worship, at others a means to an end, and at others still consumed as food. Georgiou’s approach mirrors the Hindu worldview in which men and animals share a common psyche. The act of photocopying and painting over his images (a cheap and practical DIY tool in the hands of the artist-traveller) draws attention to the things one might not notice or ignore. The colour yellow functions as a residue of memory, a trace left behind when the animal itself is gone, and is also a luminous evocation of impermanence. It alternates between highlighting form and letting it slip away as if it were suspended between existence and oblivion. In a world where human activity decides the fate of animals, Georgiou’s images call upon us to consider not just how we view animals, but also how we remember them. Could it be that Georgiou’s animals are mere projections into a future wherein they exist as nothing more than spectral memories?