Childhood often carries an illusion of invulnerability. Surrounded by caregivers, protected by the limited knowledge of what loss, pain, and mortality is, one experiences the world through a sense of relative permanence. Yet, adulthood announces itself through moments of rupture. The illness of a parent for example provokes the realization of bodily fragility and creates a sudden reversal of roles within a family: the receiver of care becomes the giver. And suddenly, the child of the family finds themselves caring for those who once cared for them.
At the same time, the numerous world crises they may experience from a young age condemn them to an early and hasty maturity, leaving them with the numb feeling of too many responsibilities too soon, and with childhood and adolescence years not lived as they were meant.
Throughout Captain Stavros’ exhibition, Finding Balance, duality and superimposition are both present: soft and hard – inviting, but risky – porous and reflective – carefree, but serious. And this is exactly the felt duality of a person coming of age, who is starting to realize the actual content of their adulthood while also inevitably still experiencing the child-self point of view.
In the exhibition, Stavros places objects as compasses – hints that guide one after the other to the unfolding of a mystery. Animal bones await osteomancers to read them, much like at a feast before a big battle, in an attempt to foresee its outcome. Colorful dice, slides, and miniatures have been placed with the same devotion and strategic direction of a child playing, deeply focused on the scenario of their imagination.
He has set the stage for the visualization of that shifting moment between someone’s child point of view to their adult point of view, and a whole playground for this dual perspective.
Both a child with their toys and an osteomancer with animal bones read their preferred objects to make meaning of a reality far from here and now, whether that be their fantasy or the future. The visitor of Finding Balance will find themselves in this spectrum between a child and an osteomancer, reading Stavros’ pieces, playing and foreseeing.
A person is never a finished structure; one is always becoming. The child-self does not disappear, but remains embedded within the adult body, resurfacing in moments of uncertainty, grief, tenderness, or wonder. We all are someone’s child after all.
—Nikoletta Georgakopoulou
