Solid Objects: Anthoula Lelekidis
Tayari Jones keeps a baby food jar of dirt on her desk from Toni Morrison’s hometown. CJ Hauser gifts her students a tiny plastic chicken to pull out whenever and wherever it’s time to write. Writing totems, talismans, amulets—we ascribe many names to the objects we keep close while we write. These objects inspire us, comfort us; they can prompt our productivity, make their way into our writing, or at the very least, serve as a dangling carrot to the world beyond our daily pages.
In Virginia Woolf’s short story, “Solid Objects” her main character grows enamored with a smooth piece of green glass he finds at the beach. “It pleased him; it puzzled him; it was so hard, so concentrated, so definite an object compared with the vague sea and the hazy shore.” The right object can be our own green glass; a raft when we’re treading the slippery shapes thoughts take.
In SOLID OBJECTS, we ask writers about the objects most essential to their creative practice, and what exactly these objects do for their brains.
This edition is written by Anthoula Lelekidis. You can view her work in Issue 70, available for purchase here.
Panagiotaki 10 is the address of my father’s childhood home in Greece: a home my grandfather, Apostolos, built on his own in the early 1960s using materials of plaster and cement. Every year during my childhood I would visit and stay in this home for two months out of the summer. It quickly became a home that I inhabited physically as much as spiritually, even though I lived almost five thousand miles away during the rest of the year. I often conjure up this home in my memory and channel it deeply during my creative practice.
Grandma Anthoula’s kitchen was very small but produced hundreds (if not thousands) of delicious, nourishing family meals which fed up to ten of us at once. The appliances and cabinets were built along one wall. The walls were concrete and painted white, with blue patterned tiles covering them. White cabinets surrounded an old silver sink. The refrigerator was always fully stocked. It was white and short—one would have to bend down to look into and scavenge through it. Its door never really fully closed on its own, so I remember the sound of it being shut constantly. Across the fridge was a small table pushed against the corner, coupled with two wooden chairs. A thin plastic floral tablecloth covered the top as I sat to eat a slice of bread covered with Merenda, a chocolate hazelnut spread. While staring at the wall, I would notice a hefty wooden bread box at its end, always filled with the freshest loaf. The ceilings were low and cave-like. Not many could fit in this space at once, but there was always room for everyone. Hungry family members would come together and sit outside in the living room waiting for grandma to bring out her culinary creations. The living room housed a wooden dining table covered with a similar plastic tablecloth and napkin holder.
There were no windows in the kitchen, only a door that led to the backyard. My favorite section of the kitchen was the pantry room or “apothiki.” An unlocked door led you into a dusty dark room. This pantry was filled with jars of homemade tomato sauces made in the summer to last you throughout the winter time. More jars of homemade peach, cherry, fig, and strawberry marmalades lined the hand-built shelves which surrounded the perimeter of the small room. The plastic crates covered most of the floor, housing potatoes, onions, and tomatoes. The same plastic tablecloth appeared again and was installed as curtains over each shelf. Not many were allowed into the apothiki, but I would sneak in and marvel at all the ingredients. Ingredients that New Yorkers could only dream of getting their hands on: endless amounts of fresh in-season vegetables and fruits often grown in our backyard. That dusty, dingy room was scary at first sight but now has become a historic and legendary room, a space where meals originated and were crafted with love and hard work.
The front yard, the “avli,” was another important meeting place. Surrounded by small olive oil can planters and large palm trees, the avli was a place where neighbors would chat, wedding receptions would be held, and children would play games. Weekly barbecues and traditional folk dance parties were a staple in this yard, where multiple generations continue to take their first footsteps. When thinking about this gathering space, a warm sense of togetherness and community fills my body and soul. My childhood was marked by this land, this kitchen, this yard and home: spaces that still continue to brand themselves in my daily longing of one day returning to my ancestors’ homeland.
This longing deeply impacts and informs my artistic practice. The physical running of prints through a press during my printmaking process reflects and reminds me of how my ancestors used their hands to build their home, pick cotton in the fields, plant and harvest vegetables on their farmlands and then cook and gather at the dining room table. It is a constant daydream within my mind, both when creating work and thinking about the development of a new series. My goal is to allow for a deeper exploration of how diasporic ruptures might materialize and speak anew, visually and transcendently, across time, space, and memory. The inspiration I gain from these connections to my predecessors is vital and life giving—it keeps me cognizant of the struggles my ancestors faced during the Pontic Genocide and allows me to honor their memories and have them exist and thrive beyond the grave.
Anthoula Lelekidis is a Greek-American lens-based artist who utilizes photography, printmaking, and mixed media in her practice. Her work navigates themes of personal memory, loss, and migration. With a deep interest in the archive, she alters found family photos to interpret a deeper tie to her heritage and uncover ancestral roots within blank spaces of her recollection. This investigation and the need for an individualized story, act as a meditation between the realm of post-memory and realization.
She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from Parsons School of Design and received the Community Fellowship from the International Center of Photography from 2018 to 2020. She was a resident at the Skopelos Foundation of the Arts in 2016 and earned a scholarship from the Students On Ice Organization to travel to photograph Antarctica in 2007. Lelekidis is currently the recipient of Manhattan Graphics Center's printmaking scholarship and is a faculty member at the International Center of Photography. She is based in Queens, NY.