ELENA ADAMOU: ICONOGRAPHIES (Tiny Resistance, Crevices and Other Creatures)

Critical essay by Erica Romano

There are three tenses: the present of the past, the present of the present, and the present of the future. 

These three kinds of tenses exist, in a way, within the soul, and I see them nowhere else: 

the present of the past is memory, 

the present of the present is vision, 

the present of the future is anticipation. 

St. Augustine, Confessions, XI

Iconography (from the Greek eikón, “image,” and graphìa, “writing”) is a discipline within art history and archaeology that identifies the poses, gestures, and clothing of the subjects depicted, along with the objects, animals, and plants that characterize them. The solo exhibition Iconographies. Tiny Resistance, Crevices and Other Creatures by artist Elena Adamou (Nicosia, Cyprus, 1991) offers a fresh perspective on our relationship with natural elements: at the heart of a profound process of observation and research lies an iconographic herbarium of small plants whose existence is not defined by their role as a functional accompaniment to any human presence. Adamou’s relationship with Nature, which is reflected in his artistic practice, is an intimate connection with the perception of time—experienced as an inner presence that gives rhythm to the migration and wandering flow of ideas. Thus, in this work—which places human and natural processes on an equal footing—the artist shifts focus from “what” to “who” and portrays—elevating them to the status of subjects—wild, endemic, and naturalised invasive plants of the Mediterranean that tell stories of autonomy and independence, having grown in arid crevices or uncultivated spaces forgotten by the layered processes of modern urbanisation. The images and various narrative approaches chosen for the exhibition present a variety of species within these categories, but without any intention of cataloging them; instead, they highlight a quality that renders them both mystical and mythological creatures, whose postures are true forms of creative resistance. The sacred, almost regal air that plants take on in the skillful and refined guise that Adamou crafts for them—through various techniques and media, such as embroidery, photography, and site-specific installations—is a clear invitation to contemplation, a meditative act that, in a single, unified vision, encompasses both the observed object and the observer, reversing their roles: the object observed with intensity becomes a subject that does not need our gaze to exist, thus revealing a reality that precedes us, a Nature that knows how to see and that had already planned to remain amidst the cracks of our existence.

Tiny Resistance, Crevices and Other Creatures

The title Tiny Resistance, Crevices and Other Creatures has its own history and derives, in fact, from the name of the project developed during the 2025 edition of the ECOSCAPES residency programme organised by Magnus Tempus 360° in Nicosia (Cyprus), of which the exhibition at the primopiano space in Montesilvano (PE) is one of the first extensions, having brought to fruition here part of the research initiated in Cyprus. 

The exhibition’s subtitle, therefore, helps us better define the sphere in which the artist operates: small acts of resistance, interstitial spaces, otherworldly creatures, beyond the human, beyond the visible. Taken together, these words reveal a particular approach to reality, suggesting a way of looking at the outer surface of things that lingers carefully, in slow, deliberate moments, in order to connect with something deeper that goes beyond appearances.