We Would Be Millionaires If We Could Sell Dust is a solo exhibition by Eleni Ieremia held in Hordaland Kunstsenter’s Project Room, consisting of a trio of films that unfold across nail salons in Bergen (Norway) and Athens (Greece), and the moon. Through documenting and observing the interiors and rituals of nail salons, Eleni Ieremia’s work reflects upon intimacy, transactional relationships and their spaces, interconnection and labour politics – blurring fictive and real worlds.
In DESSI we meet the eponymous protagonist Dessi Draganova, who runs and works in a nail salon in Athens, where she reflects upon her artistic practice as a nail technician, the relationships between her clients and the rhythms of her daily labour and creativity.
Peeking behind the scenes of Nails For You, a Bergen salon, the video work We Would Be Millionaires If We Could Sell Dust eavesdrops into the usually invisible and often intensive labour that accompanies the intimacy of pedicures and manicures. Piles of dust from filed nails are swept away and the space is reset for another day.
The dust filed from our nails is the same dust that hides under our beds, the same dust that forms a thin layer on the surface of the moon. The bed of a nail, with its half moon shape, was once used to predict our futures. Moving from the real, tangible spaces of the nail salons, we encounter a semi-fictional nail moon goddess in Her Darkness, who monologues about the mysterious, the beyond and our interconnectedness, to superstition.
These three films work together to capture the small intimacies, quiet labour and rituals that hum under the surface of the nail salons and beneath the transactional services.
Eleni Ieremia’s exhibition is part of RUMOURS & MURMURS: An Archive Project – a project initiated by Ruby Eleftheriotis in collaboration with HKS. This programme invites Bergen-based artists to explore HKS’s public archives, resulting in a solo exhibition that exists in relation to the archives – embedded within the pages of HKS’ history.
Victoria Durnak’s 2015 exhibition Hemmelig Venn (“Secret Friend”) serves as the entry-point and connection to the archive and Ieremia’s current exhibition. Hemmelig Venn explored intimacy, friendship, and imagined community – themes that echo in Ieremia’s exploration of connection and community in the salon setting.
Having encountered Durnak’s exhibition in the archives, Ieremia reached out to Durnak, sparking an exchange of emails and shared drawings. Together, the two artists mapped connections between friendship, the spaces where social ties are cultivated and the silent exchanges embedded in both their practices. These conversations culminated in a collaborative drawing which can be found by the HKS archives, and a publication blending reflections from curator and writer Ruby Eleftheriotis, stills from Ieremia’s films, Durnak and Ieremia’s email exchanges, and scattered fragments from the archives.
