Written by Alexis Fidetzis

Collaborative performance, Museum vernissage.

Through the invention of the fictional revolutionary and scholar Nick Boricua the Puerto Rico Project is investigating aspects of Greece’s (self)identification as a heroic, exceptional, resistant and brotherless nation.

The biography of Nikias Fikas, whose nom de guerre during his adventures in Puerto Rico was Nick Boricua was developed by the intermingling of various historical personalities that played a role in the greek revolution but were later sidelined due to political affiliations. The construction of a Museum where the life and time of a fictional character were presented as reality was a method of intrusion into institutional modes of creating narratives, value and tradition.

These notions have been part of the greek national narrative since the birth of modern Greece, and are very much based on the antinomy of both adopting western romantic projections and, at the same time, revolting against them through the production of cultural difference and the invention of greek folk. The goal of the PR project is to investigate the ways in which greek financial crisis has enhanced new identifications with the “other” (e.g. Latin American socialism) through mythologies of national resistance.

Athens Biennale “Omonoia” 5-6

In collaboration with Panos Skalvenitis and Kostis Stafylakis