Interview with Thanos Raftopoulos

Fat Cap talks with artist Thanos Raftopoulos

(Summer 2023)

A brief introduction

A simple man with innate sensitivities and criteria that come from several lost, but also won, games of life and its lived lessons. Born in Athens, in a voracious city full of “so-called” opportunities. These, like sirens, stood strong and accompanied me for a large part of my life, redeeming visions with the mundane realism of the economic price. The crisis of 2012, unemployment, inevitable for a large part of the world, brought order back to the beginnings, as they were written from the beginning, and which I simply closed my eyes to, postponing and postponing… A satirical cartoonist, a creative graphic designer and photographer, a painter and many others emerged, taking the priorities that were theirs and deserved, when the “postponement” ended.

 The Municipality of Agios Dimitrios

A pivotal point and crucial factor was my collaboration with the municipality of Agios Dimitrios in a unique project, which aims to provide artistic intervention in all schools, squares and other public spaces of the Municipality.  These spaces, which usually “pulsate” with neutral colorlessness and corresponding emotion, are transformed, day by day, into something else: more human, more substantial, closer to what we would all desire. You know, – only then – to my surprise, did I realize how many schools exist around us, almost unnoticed.

How many children go through them every day, facing buildings and walls painted in shades that kill imagination, mental and emotional exploration, perhaps the most basic reason why they participate in the educational process. We continue, therefore, with a visual perception, often, perhaps, heretical, but useful and generative. After all, if something is not born, no one can change anything!

Your most recent large-scale works appear on school surfaces. What challenges does this involve?

One only has to look past what we describe as “surfaces” and what is, of course, there are children. Throughout the entire process of creating the visual intervention, the children participate either by drawing themselves or by closely observing the development of the work itself.

They express an opinion, applaud or suggest corrections, ask questions, but, above all, they become aware. They understand the reason for artistic creation, opening up new codes of thought and perception for the things around them.

Creating under difficult external conditions is the hardest part of this endeavor. The winter cold and the summer heat must become your friends, to keep going.

Athens, especially its historic center, is now being illustrated, on a massive scale, with sponsored works of “street art” or, as they now tend to be called, “urban murals” (“purification” of older terms in favor of “urban gentrification”?). How do you position yourself in the face of this reality?

It is now an international practice, which contributes to the so-called “gentrification”. What could be problematic is whether sponsorships impose the type and style of the produced creations. In my opinion, the artist should be left undistracted and unaffected in terms of his artistic appreciation and creation.  In many types of art, economic interventionism and the benefit that results from it, transforms an artist’s sixth sense, entrenching it in limits and directions that are anything but spontaneous.

Would you do graffiti or a street art project on a protected monument, antiquity, landmark or other work of public art and, if so, with what reasoning and under what conditions?

Such an intervention would, in my opinion, be an example of a peculiar historical anachronism.

That is, it would violate the spirit and conception of a work of art as it was created in its time by transferring it, in a violent manner, to another (modern) perception, overturning the succession and evolution on which it was based. It is important to preserve our principles and sources unaltered, so that they become timeless centers of reflection and contemplation.

The Municipality “cleans up”, the taggers continue. Are the mass “clean-ups” a “solution-answer” to the ubiquitous “dirty tagging” (note: the international term is used with reservation, in the absence of an alternative, for the time being)? Is all graffiti – unlicensed – “vandalism“?

The word “vandalism” is intertwined with the concept of barbarity. If we agree with this concept, we will spontaneously say “yes.”  But what are the causes that produce these actions? How and why are they adopted and escalated? Should we once again turn to the causes that lead to such practices, so that we can understand the reason that gives rise to them and, if necessary, cure them?The backlash that is being caused in modern society cannot be addressed in dismissive terms. Before it reaches its extreme and becomes uncontrollable, we must focus and correct it, after first listening, seeing and understanding what is causing it, even taking steps back from wrong approaches.  Empathy and the right way of thinking are enough, without any other kind of ankylosis or palinode.

The artist’s social media are:

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/thano.raf και Instagram – thano_raf