Violetta Lorentzou

Curatorial Review

Palamas Reframed is a rigorously constructed photographic collage series that responds to the aftermath of Storm Daniel (2023) in Palamas, Greece, not through documentary completeness, but through architectural recomposition. Rather than presenting flooded interiors as singular sites of loss, the work assembles fragments from multiple homes into composite, speculative structures that hover between realism and abstraction. Bedrooms, kitchens, courtyards, and living rooms are digitally stitched together into dollhouse-like architectures, where walls are sliced open, floors float, and domestic boundaries dissolve. What emerges is not a record of destruction, but a visual system for thinking through collapse.

Violetta Lorentzou | Terrace | 2025

The strength of the series lies in its disciplined spatial logic. Despite the evident fractures—misaligned walls, exposed ceilings, suspended furniture—the images are governed by a coherent architectural order. Each composite appears inhabitable, even calm, at first glance. This imposed order is crucial: it mirrors the human impulse to reorganize chaos after disaster, to reassert structure where it has been violently removed. Yet the work resists any illusion of restoration. Cracks remain visible, waterlines linger, and domestic objects—beds, wardrobes, washing machines—are displaced into improbable positions, quietly refusing closure.

Violetta Lorentzou | Living Room | 2025

By collapsing distinctions between interior and exterior, private and public, Palamas Reframed exposes how domestic space loses its protective function under environmental stress. Homes are no longer containers of safety but porous shells, opened to weather, gravity, and time. The dollhouse aesthetic is particularly effective here: it introduces a controlled, almost clinical distance, allowing the viewer to observe devastation without spectacle. This distance avoids sentimentality while amplifying the political and environmental implications of the work.

Violetta Lorentzou | Bedroom | 2025

Importantly, the series does not treat architecture as a neutral backdrop. Instead, architecture becomes a visual language—one that registers vulnerability, hierarchy, and control. The act of reconstruction is not nostalgic; it is critical. By rebuilding these spaces digitally, the artist does not attempt to “fix” what was broken, but rather to make instability legible. The composites suggest that permanence is a fragile fiction, especially in an era of accelerating environmental disruption.

Violetta Lorentzou | Kitchen Space | 2025

Situated between documentary photography and speculative construction, Palamas Reframed operates as both evidence and proposition. It asks how we see disaster once the event has passed, when debris is cleared but structural trauma remains. The work ultimately proposes that reconstruction—whether architectural or visual—can be an act of inquiry rather than repair. In allowing disorder to persist within carefully structured images, the series offers a restrained yet powerful meditation on habitation, loss, and the uneasy architectures we build to manage uncertainty.