JOHN STATHATOS
akea: atonements
It has been argued that all western thought can be traced back to the presocratic philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus. Of Heraclitus' monumental work About Nature, exactly 1,243 words survive - a total, by the latest count, of 114 fragments. Three of these fragments consist of a single word, and of these, the shortest is just four letters long: akea.

This rare ancient Greek term can mean "cures", but also has the sense of "atonements" or "sacrifices". Its precise context is of course irrecoverable now, but it seems in harmony with the basic tenets of Heraclitean thought as expressed through some of the other surviving fragments, and in particular the idea of purification through a real or metaphorical fire. For Heraclitus, fire was one of the three basic elements of the universe as well as an agent of cyclical regeneration; as he reminds us in another fragment, "fire when it comes will judge and condemn all things".

akea: atonements was first shown in the monastic dormitory of the 14th-century Estonian castle of Kuressaare in 1995. The complete work consists of six silver prints on aluminium, 165x140 cms or 140x165 cm, and of the title painted on the wall in Greek and in English.
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