Panos Balomenos on reclaiming personal memory through painting

Panos Balomenos is a visual artist from Athens, Greece, living and working in Helsinki, Finland since 2003. Balomenos uses watercolor painting and performance to combine personal narratives, historical events, and fiction to explore subjects such as power relations, sexuality and politics.

Panos is currently in New York City for a three-month residency hosted by Triangle Arts Association. His residency is part of the international residency program of the Finnish Cultural Foundation (SKR) and is supported by the FCINY. While his residency is set to conclude at the end of September, we had the chance to visit him at his studio in DUMBO before his departure to learn about his relationship with New York and the current series of paintings he is working on.

What inspired you to come to New York for a residency? What kind of projects have you been working on?

I came to New York for a project that deals with the city's urban landscape, labor, and migration. Specifically, it is about my presence in the city and the memories from my childhood, intertwined with the stories told by my father after his personal experience of living in New York for one year as a migrant worker back in 1986.

My father had his own construction company in Athens, Greece, which he founded in the 1970s. His business went bankrupt in 1985, and the debt accumulated in his name became unmanageable.

In the 1980s, the difference between the US dollar and the Greek national currency, the drachma, was so significant that a good monthly salary in the US was equivalent to almost four months' salary in Greece. This fact encouraged my father to come to New York for one year, where he worked for a construction company run by his good friend, who had emigrated to the US long before him.

His year in New York helped him pay off a significant portion of his debt in Greece. However, his absence caused profound trauma to the entire family, as he had to leave my mother, me (then 10 years old), and my two sisters, who were 3 and 15 years old at the time. All of us were at very sensitive and demanding ages.

During my three-month residency at Triangle, I have been working on a painting series in which I reclaim my personal memory and space in a city that feels both distant and familiar to me at the same time.

What do you hope to achieve or experience during your residency?

The plans I had before my arrival in the city and my experiences here have gone much further than my initial expectations.

It is difficult to talk about achievements because this is not something you can measure in a concrete or immediate way—at least, not in my case. I believe that such experiences take time to digest, and even more time if one hopes to see specific final results. On the other hand, I believe certain outcomes appear unexpectedly much later because these processes are slow and complex, and they are measured not quantitatively but qualitatively.

What I can say is that my time in New York has been a unique and unforgettable experience, and it has certainly filled some gaps I had in relation to my critical thinking. This is one of the most important things for people working in the way I do.

The paintings I have created so far have shifted in a different direction compared to how I used to approach my subjects visually in the past. They deal with the universal and sensitive subject of migration and labor in an abstract way.

Your work often critiques a society driven by power, money, and manipulation. How do you see the role of art in challenging these societal values, and what impact do you hope your work will have on audiences in this regard?

I belong to the old school of artists who believe that under certain geopolitical circumstances or in times of turmoil, our work is partly to criticize power, no matter where it comes from. I believe visual artists are probably “the last of the Mohicans” in our societies if you permit me to say so, who stand up and speak out about humanity's problems and injustices. As I see the developments around us, where journalism is undergoing a fundamental crisis in all possible ways, artists need to continue offering both visual poetry and questions on issues that others don't dare to address.

I fear that, nowadays, societies pressure visual artists to function like designers, and I don't think this is the right direction to take. After all, what would be the difference between art and design if we, as artists, continue offering the same things designers do? There must be something beyond beautiful objects that distinguishes these two fields.

What is waiting for you after New York? 

After New York, I have two different projects to work with and complete until August 2025, while in between, I will be preparing my solo show, which will open in December 2024 at Gallery SIC in Athens, Greece. 

Parallelly I will be teaching painting at the Art School Maa, in Suomenlinna, exactly as I have been doing so far every Tuesday for the last 10 years; an exciting program all in all.

Photos and questions: Sini-Ida Heiskanen

Published: September 20, 2024