Xiranthoi, Rooted in Stone: The Herbarium of the Aegean
Opening: 1 August, 8:00 PM
Opening Hours: Tuesday-Friday, 7:00-10:00 PM
Saturday & Sunday, 11:00 AM-1:00 PM and 7:00-10:00 PM
Closed on Mondays
The artists of the Amalia Gardens Residency approach the nature of Andros as a living archive of memory, where stone, dried flowers, aromatic plants, and traces of human presence come together to form a new herbarium.
During June 2026, Amalia Gardens Non-profit Civil Company launches its third artist residency, entitled Xiranthoi, Rooted in Stone: The Herbarium of the Aegean, bringing together seven artists on the island of Andros. Sergej Andreevski (Skopje), Alexis Avlamis (Athens - Kefalonia), Nikos Kaskouras (Athens), Chrysa Liarmakopoulou (Athens - Andros), Satu Metsola (Helsinki), Nikola Pijanmanov (Strumica) and Maria Todeschini (Venice) explore the island's natural landscape and flora, creating new works of art that reimagine the idea of a herbarium of the future through their research and residency at Amalia Gardens Residency in Vitali, Andros.
The residency culminates in a group exhibition, opening on 1st of August 2026 at the Batsi Cultural Centre and running until August 30th. The exhibition will be open to the public with free admission.
Charis Savvides, Artistic Director of the residency and curator of the exhibition, writes: "Between the stones and the sparse soil of the Aegean, the Xiranthoi are born not from water, but from memory, persistence, and light. A landscape that appears barren, yet blossoms through silent forms: dried flowers, fractured stems, invisible roots preserving the hidden secrets of life within the earth."
European travellers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, such as Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, Richard Chandler, Edward Dodwell, and Ludwig Ross, journeyed across Greece and its islands, recording with wonder the land's austere wilderness and its archaic, almost primordial beauty.
Travelling through Andros in 1700, Tournefort wrote: "Rien n'est plus sauvage que ces collines pierreuses, mais elles sont pleines d'aromates et d'ombres antiques" (Nothing is wilder than these rocky hills, yet they are filled with aromas and ancient shadows).
Describing the dryness of the Greek summer, Dodwell observed: "The sun had burnt every blade of grass, and yet the land breathed an austere poetry, a solemnity of silence". Chandler, upon seeing a wild shrub emerging from ancient ruins, remarked: "Nature has reclaimed what marble left behind".
For these travellers, the Greek landscape was no longer merely the backdrop of a painting hanging in a museum. It became the protagonist itself - a living organism speaking in a voice that was vibrant, powerful, and stony at once, carrying both the excitement of discovery and the enduring memory of place and history.
Our own Xiranthoi seek to enter into dialogue with this legacy, not through nostalgia, but through transformation. Through drought, decay, and dust, they search for a new aesthetic: the aesthetic of endurance. They envision a herbarium of the future, where what has dried does not signify death, but metamorphosis. Where stone and root become archive, drawing, and sculptural form.
Through the individual perspective of each artist, this evolving herbarium aspires to become both a hymn to austerity and a reminder that even within the driest of landscapes - literal or metaphorical - new forms continue to emerge.
Supporters & Sponsors
Amalia Gardens Residency and the exhibition Xiranthoi are presented under the auspices of the Municipality of Andros, with the economic support of Elytron.eu.
Press & Communications
Leonie Gavrias
E: leonie.gavrias@gmail.com, info@amaliagardens.org
amaliagardens.gr
Initiative
Memory is never lost. It simply drifts away from the light, like an old photograph that fades with time and creases along its edges. Yet all it takes is a single impulse for it to come alive again. A place, a scent, a ray of light or the echo of a sound can restore not only an image, but also the feeling that once accompanied it.
Art is born when memory - whether personal or inherited - meets time. It requires silence, observation, patience and dedication. It needs a place where experiences and stories are allowed to mature and slowly transform into creation.
Amalia Gardens, a non-profit cultural organisation, was founded by architects Charis Savvides and Penny Valsamidou with the vision of creating this refuge.