Konstantinos Sklavenitis

For Konstantinos Sklavenitis, food is a form of ‘pure cultural evidence’, due to its particular relationship with time, place, people and the environment. For Sklavenitis, it is ‘like a myth...it develops continuously’. He often chooses scenes of food, cooking and convivial eating, which represent shared creativity and nourishment, as a way to tell stories of temporal cultural changes.

The starting point for Wifi pass: patsas1952 originated from a particular encounter Sklavenitis had at a busy Greek restaurant at 3am. The establishment was serving all their customers a traditional soup with tripe; ‘I asked the waiter for the wifi password; he told me, of course, the password is ‘Patas1952’... the name of that soup and… the date the restaurant was founded’. For Sklavenitis, this small story encouraged him to think about the changes this independent restaurant must have witnessed and the multitude of memories enshrined in that one particular place; indeed, how important food is for humankind and how something as simple and prosaic as soup can evoke complicated questions. The painting encourages its viewers to recall their own memories centred around food and the act of eating and what it means in a wider cultural context.