Lito Kattou

Soothsayers

2024-2025 | ongoing series

Endless wanderers, the Soothsayers arrive carrying with them flowers, liquid containers,compasses and other tools incorporated into their utility suits, while accompanied by copper wings of flying species. The space is envisioned as a landscape from which the Soothsayers descend to offer care to the wings and feathers they are beholding or collected all the way.
Wings symbolize hope, freedom, escape, success or progress and spirituality. The forms of the wing pieces encircling the sculptural bodies relate and reference various migratory species that traverse the European continent through the Mediterranean area, some of them already abolished or others under the threat of extinction. The wings and feathers realized in copper, which as a material holds properties linked to the technological development of the human civilization from antiquity to contemporanity, have now been detached from the bodies they belonged to. Fragmented as they are, they might indicate a state of causality and vulnerability but their metal materiality promises a robust recovery and re-attachment. Protection from further deterioration might now be given to them.
Unprecedented for how long the Soothsayers have been wandering for, from where they have departed, or if there are more stops to take in their future plans, the inability to grasp a very precise relation of their time and origin makes them being perceived as nomadic beings of a universal range. The utilitarian elements attached to their bodies are -except for caregiving purposes- destined also for their own survival throughout their journeys. The imagery of landscapes painted and carried by their epidermis and garments reveals that they are coming from or are heading to various terrains, from tranquil hot daylights to turbulent stormy weather. As their name-giving indicates, a Soothsayer is able to foresee the future. Thus being social, political, personal but also the future of the environment, to sooth, to bring relief and to heal as with the migratory species that have been accompanying them in their journeys. Seen as mythic characters, deities, oracles or protectors, they function as mediators between nature and humans.
Multi-dimensional and cross-temporal, the Soothsayers stand as a warning of a yet-definite climate overshadowed by colonial resonances, while at the same time they offer propositions of reimagined destinies. In the light of turbulent landscapes, and their realities of a dramatically changing environment, the Soothsayers might be proposing a consideration of fused forces as a way to confront our earthly devastations, to dismantle hierarchies and bridge connections (ancient and re-imagined) between nature and phenomena of our shared reality.