Can a painting change our perspective on what is happening in the world? Can it raise awareness and mobilize consciences?
The new work by Smaro Tzenanidou, which will be inaugurated on November 18, 2025 at the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation, attempts to bring to the fore a particular aspect of climate change that focuses on humans: the forced displacement of populations.
There are an estimated 220 million climate refugees, that is, people who have fled their homes in the last 10 years due to phenomena related to climate change. In fact, it is estimated that by 2050 they will have exceeded 1 billion, causing unknown social and economic consequences. These people are so far in a way «invisible» to the international community, in the sense that there is no legal framework that addresses this type of migration, while there are not even commitments from states and international organizations to develop frameworks that will help in their recognition and protection.
With Thought, works created exclusively for this exhibition, Smaro completes a trilogy that began in 2011 with Innocence, continued in 2014 with Memory. The cycle of life: Innocence that at some point is adulterated by Thought which is then set aside by Memory. In an already troubled world, Smaro looks beyond the obvious, searching for humans the way George Seferis[1] did as a particular aspect of climate change: her artistic gaze focuses on the millions of climate migrants, that is, those who abandon their homes in search of a safe and better life.
Smaro’s new work, titled «The Invisibles of the Earth», is characterized by its intensity and distinctive color palette to convey the intellectual and emotional burden of the «human – climate change» relationship, and at the same time by an impressionistic rendering of the images that the event evokes. In her frame, the constant buttle between bitterness and optimism, disappointment and hope, destruction and rebirth and finally the eternal conflict between darkness with light.
The exhibition is co-organized by the Municipality of Moschato – Tavros and the Regional Union of Municipalities of Attica (PEDA) and is under the Auspices of His Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.
CO-ORGANIZATION & SPONSORS
About her new work, Smaro Tzenanidou writes:
«The starting point for each of my works is a real image. Around it a small world is built as it is or as we would like it to remain. With danger and fear sometimes but also with the hope that always exists for a change, a help that will come, a new beginning. Color can have different readings and the work as a whole leaves freedom for different interpretations. If I could express my own personal anguish I would say that we are all children of climate change, and we live on a planet that is constantly changing its face. Are we really small in a huge world? Or are we many and strong enough to change this new climate reality?»
Smaro Tzenanidou was born in Thessaloniki. She graduated in 1997 from the State School of Fine Arts Saint Etienne and in 1999 from the School of Fine Arts Perpignan in France. She has held 13 solo exhibitions, while she has participated in more than 26 group exhibitions. Her works are in many private collections. From 2000 to the present she has been teaching painting to children and adults at the «Tzenanidou School of Fine Arts ». In 1997 she worked as a curator of art exhibitions at the European Capital of Culture “Thessaloniki ‘97”.
Archaeologist and Art Historian Iris Kritikou writes about this exhibition:
«In the midst of an ever-worsening environmental crisis, Smaro Tzenanidou joins her own voice with the global movement of art in alertness and her imperative active presence. Her intense spectral fields, her insightful visual commentaries that articulate extraordinary geophysical and social maps of horrific and absurd events, dialogue with the corresponding testimonies of important artists from different parts of the world. The painter’s gaze meets other gazes, traverses the delimited visual field of the image, explores its primary components as factual data, questions the given present, seeking its overthrow and solution, confirming the crucial role of art in times of stormy changes and fundamental crisis».
INFO
«The Invisibles on Earth»
Smaro Tzenanidou
Painting Exhibition
Opening: Tuesday 18/11/2025, 19.00-22.00
Duration until Sunday 7/12/2025 | Exhibition Hours: daily 18:00-22:00
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[1] «In our gradually shrinking world, everyone is in need of all the others. We must look for man wherever we can find him», from the speech of the poet George Seferis when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature (1963).
Smaro 