But Don’t Tell Anyone is a residency and exhibition on initiation and secrecy. When a person is entrusted with a secret, part of the excitement is the power it gives them to possibly (and discreetly, of course) share it further. The Eleusinian Mysteries rank as the most secret and, at once, the most democratic rites to have been performed in ancient Greece. Revealing any information about them was punishable by death. Thousands of people, including women, slaves, and non-Greek citizens, were initiated each year, swearing an oath of secrecy in order to partake in the mysteries of Demeter.
These rites – which touched on the afterlife, the cult of agriculture and rebirth, spirituality, and psychedelic and communal experience over the course of almost two millennia – remain an unsolved enigma right down until today, and are still core to the identity of the town, which has since become a major Greek industrial hub. The residency programme is inviting five emerging artists to spend time in Elefsina, where they will be initiated by five international artists. Taking the speculation that surrounds these extraordinary pagan rites as a starting point, the residency and its resulting exhibition – comprising five new commissions by the resident artist initiates and five existing works by their mentor “initiators,” all installed inside the archaeological site – are seeking to reinterpret the meaning of such notions as initiation and secrecy today, forging forth in various social, political, poetic, and cyber directions.
