It is hard to categorize their work, and that might be an advantage. It is hard to say their name, and that might be a complication, or just part of the intentional enigma. They are certainly not improvising. Their action includes refined forms of provocation, chaos, exploration, sustained by a recurring method. After all, they represent a meeting between Venice and Greece, an inborn capacity to navigate between commerce and glory, aesthetics and philosophy. Fate, known as destiny to some, brought them together in 2003 in a darkroom, when they were both students at the Masters program in Visual Arts at the IUAV in Venice, taking the analog photography course of Guido Guidi. Developing photos they made an impression on each other, and in 2005 they began a partnership in life and work. She is Katia Meneghini, with a degree in Art History from Università Ca’ Foscari in Venice, who then as an ‘artist in residence’ gained experience abroad, in Denmark and Brazil, and at the Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto in Biella. He is Thanos Zakopoulos, who before reaching Venice took a degree in Product Design at Solent University in Southampton, UK. Together they have designed some of the most curious reflections of young design, mixing cultures, languages, meanings, materials. One example is the CeramiX project, objects for the table we might define as ‘fusion’ because they combine the languages of design with the signs and decorations of occidental and oriental pottery. Or the Remeditate project, in which objects for use in hospitals enter everyday life and urge us to think about the precarious quality of existence. In 5 years of travels Thanos has shot an interesting sequence of images on the transformation of the landscape by man, and today – selected and laid out by a Chinese graphic artist, with comments by two European critics and artists – they have become a stimulating book. Finally, we can reveal part of the enigma: if you push the keys CTRL and Z on your computer, you take a step back. Stepping back, one doesn’t forget history!
