A recent poll showed that a whopping 98% of Greeks is baptized Christian Orthodox and the Church has an active role in everyday life, politics, even in external affairs. Religious Icon-making, agiografia (the depiction of the holy), is still taught in the largest school of fine arts in Greece. Yiannis Gigas is informed by an early Christian, proto anarchist, school of thought and Christian doctrine. In his daily life, he paints frescoes and murals in churches, yet in his artistic practice he confronts the orthodox canon with themes and icons of revolutionary heroes mixed with emblematic cultural and historical figures, from Frank Zappa to Ernesto Che Guevara. These are the saints, the martyrs, and the idols of the oppressed and the common folk alike. Iconography is the orthodox visual pop art, the equivalent of comics. Yiannis Gigas’ icons stand as archetypes of heroes in a pantheon of patron saints and demigods.

#orthodoxy #religion #iconography #folk #heroes

photos: Nysos Vasilopoulos, 6th Athens Biennale 2018 ANTI