m e r sh
and l ee
Silent Witness - Traveler
2023
Location: Crete
Competition entry: Art Prize 2024 G. & A. Mamidakis Foundation
An art installation In collaboration with Panagis Marketos
Design team: Lida Badafareh, Panagis Marketos, Mehrshad Atashi
A traveler finds herself wandering into a passage. She questions her reality; on one side, a door leads back to her room; on the other, the wall opens up to a scene that evokes familiar moments in nature: the transition of dusk to dawn or the serene sight of light filtering through trees in a moment of quiet. She progresses through the passage, unsure of what she is witnessing. Desiring to venture beyond the passage’s boundaries, she tries to proceed but is unable to. Suddenly, an object on a stone, distinguished by a peephole, captures her attention. Curious, she peers through it and is immediately captivated by the image revealed to her.
Silent witness - Traveler is an architectural intervention forging a connection with nature in the corridor serving rooms 418-424. It invites a pause in the routine, transforming the corridor into a stage of encounters akin to the traveler's mental imagery of nature. The traveler transforms into an inhabitant of nature with a membrane that serves as a gateway for open-ended narratives. Traversing the corridor becomes a parallel journey into the traveler’s imaginary—an opportunity for introspection, an act of care perhaps.