Black Parthenon

Black Parthenon 2009 Federation Square, Melbourne, Australia Commissioned by Robyn Archer, Director, Festival of Light 6m x 4m x 5m Lights, scaffolding, black cloth

Black Parthenon is a repatriation art action, a public light installation highlighting the issue of the appropriation of cultural and sacred objects. The work not only addresses the increasing call to repatriate the Parthenon Marbles back to Greece, but also issues of cultural appropriation and repatriation globally that we need to address as a society.

Black Parthenon uses various levels of scaffolding around which black perforated cloth is used as cladding to create an architectural imprint, a silhouette of the Parthenon. During the day the installation is a black funerary altarpiece that reflects a sense of loss; a void in the national psyche of countries which have had cultural icons and treasures taken from them.
At night Black Parthenon explodes into vibrant white and blue light, the Parthenon’s iconic simplicity illuminating the surrounding darkness.

Appropriation provides the acquirer with just the objects devoid of their emotional context. The void it leaves in the psyche of the nation from whom it is appropriated can be immense. Whether religious, spiritual, decorative or practical, we link ourselves to objects as individuals, as a community and as a nation.
There is a growing tide for the repatriation of cultural and religious objects to their rightful countries. Black Parthenon voices these concerns and asks governments holding foreign cultural objects to act with integrity and return them to their places of origin.

Konstantin Dimopoulos