The title Aerial draws on the Greek term “enaerítes” (εναερίτες), referring to electricity lineworkers whose work takes place high above the ground, in a liminal space between earth and sky, where the body, balance, and energy align. The project takes Henri Matisse’s Dance (1910) as its point of departure. The original work’s circular composition is retained, while its figures are reinterpreted as silhouettes whose working postures often evoke choreography. As in Matisse’s painting, the circle is approached not as a completed form, but as an ever-opening structure in a continuous state of becoming.

The work explores the relationship between memory, image, and energy as a cultural force. Its inspiration draws on the visual vocabulary and history of PPC (Public Power Corporation of Greece), where light operates both literally and metaphorically as a force shaping collective narratives of progress and transformation. Within this framework, the archive is not treated as a fixed repository, but as a mutable system of perception. The images that constitute it continually move between different contexts and technologies of viewing, acquiring new meanings with each transition. In this way, a space emerges in which the past reappears through the possibilities of the present.

Aerial unfolds across two levels. The first is the painted surface, which reinterprets the circular composition through a colour palette drawn from PPC’s corporate identity. The second is activated through an augmented reality (AR) application: viewed through a smartphone or tablet, the silhouettes are overlaid with fragments of archival material, while the viewer-user shapes the background. These images appear as fleeting flashes of memory, transforming the static painted surface into a dynamic field of narrative. In this way, the work operates as an open circuit of images in which the past, the present, and technologies of seeing coexist—an allegory of energy as a continuous flow that shapes how we imagine the future.