Love Letters to a (Post-)Europe, concept and curation: Lisa Alexander.

2 & 3 October 2015, Bios, Athens, Full artist line-up http://bios.gr/events/1266/

Performed by Dimou Vassiliki

Photography: Eftychia Vlacou

I was overwhelmed by the responses to this work that found me via social networking, I am deeply grateful to Dimou Vassiliki who performed with so much commitment, to Lisa Alexander for curating this work and for her careful handling of it to ensure it's realisation, and to BIOS.

The short piece consisted of Dimou Vassiliki taking salt water into her mouth, saying the words:

‘I came to the sea and I was scared. My heart is broken.'

and then repeating the action, alternating between English and Greek as a slide of a calm sea with the words on it also shifted between English and Greek.

'I came to the sea and I was scared. My heart is broken.' were the words reported to have been spoken by a fisherman on finding the bodies of the small child Aylan Kuridi who drowned along with his five-year-old brother Galip and their mother, Rihan when they attempted to make the crossing from Turkey to Greece and hope of refuge in Europe.