Truths and Lies, 1991 - 2013

The Installation Truths and Lies consists of a playful puzzle, an exercise between the representation of truth and the truth of representation. Truths and Lies were created over the period of twenty years from three series in which Antoniadis digitally processed his family’s second hand photographs. In the first series, Black Photos (1991), Antoniadis copied and magnified photographs of close and extended family, without any interference. He selected, however, flawed, tight and bizarre postures, that did not ratify the prefabricated scenario of family happiness and social integration. In the 1995 Notebooks series, he takes the concept one step further. He intrudes digitally into family memories: he stands in front of his parents while they pose, he hugs his mother from the waist, he watches himself and his brother playing. In the most recent series (2012), in the style of 19th century spiritual photography, family ghosts come to disturb his peace. Elsewhere, in an equally emphatic appeal to imagination, he depicts himself flying over the sea, provocatively defying gravity. In the installation of this series Antoniadis combines memories, digital skills and unabashed hyperbolae. The veil of mystery that hovers allows one to consider the convoluted path that separates in photographs, and in families, the truth from the lies.