The Deer from the Sewer, 2025-ongoing

This ongoing series of handmade ceramic tiles explores the contradictions of local identity, heritage, and mass tourism in Rhodes. At its center stands the Dama Dama, the island’s wild deer — a living symbol, now hollowed by endless reproduction.

The image I use doesn’t come from myth or nature, but from the surface of a sewer cover — a buried part of the city’s infrastructure. I stamp this found shape onto clay, combining it with arrows, pseudo-symbols, and fragments. The process is instinctive, physical. Each tile becomes a distorted relic: part street, part ruin, part refusal.

Fired stoneware holds the marks of pressure, fracture, touch. The surfaces are unpolished, washed with oxides and minimally glazed, resisting beautification. These are not decorative objects — they’re ghosts, stains, counter-monuments.

I see each tile as a personal gesture. A way to process anger, irony, and grief for a place that’s burning — literally and symbolically.

The Deer from the Sewer is a growing archive. A testimony to the summer of 2023, when Rhodes burned. To the deer running through the flames. To the silence that followed. To the scorched memory of a land pretending it still thrives.