Ileana Arnaoutou & Ismene King | MESAGROS

“MESAGROS” is an interdisciplinary material-research project that brings together sculpture, fieldwork, and participatory methodologies to investigate ecological grief, material memory, and the afterlives of industrial landscapes in the Mediterranean. The project centers on the creation of an affective library of forgotten materials and gestures, developed through long-term engagement with a former pebble quarry in Mesagros, Aegina, which has become an unofficial landfill for abandoned boats, plastics, and other debris.

Through walking, collecting, and employing methodologies rooted in geology and archaeology, the artists assemble an evolving archive that traces the interconnected histories of labor, industry, ecology, and everyday life. The archive functions as a living repository of materials, gestures, and forms of knowledge that are increasingly disappearing from the contemporary Mediterranean landscape.

Rooted in previous research on fragile water bodies, industrial sites, and landfills, the project approaches Aegina as a fragile ecosystem relevant to broader environmental challenges across the Mediterranean, including overtourism, water scarcity, overfishing, fires, and plastic pollution.

Drawing on contemporary archaeology and collective learning, “MESAGROS” investigates what it means to create an archive of an ever-evolving, exhausted landscape, proposing alternative approaches to materiality and commemoration. Through workshops, collective walks, and public activations, the project engages directly with a fragile yet resilient landscape, transforming the notion of the archive into a living ecology of materials, memories, and relationships.