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Memento

Year:2013
City:Vienna, Austria
Measures:100 cm x 146 cm x 20 cm
Media:Plexiglass, Embroidery on tulle
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Former pharmacist Dimitris Christoulas took his own life in Athens' Syntagma Square on the morning of 4 April 2012 at the age of 77. He had previously paid the utilities for his flat and other bills.

In a farewell letter, which Tanja Boukal integrated into her work in the original Greek, he commented on his decision:


"The occupying government of Tsolakoglou* has literally destroyed my possibility of survival, which should be based on a decent pension that I have paid in alone (without any state subsidy) over 35 years.
Having reached an age that no longer gives me the personal possibility of dynamic resistance (without ruling out, however, that if a Greek were to take the Kalashnikov, I would be the second), I find no other solution than a dignified end before I start searching the rubbish bins for food.
I believe that one day the youth without a future will take up arms and hang the national traitors upside down in Syntagma Square, just as the Italians did with Mussolini in 1945 (in Piazzale Loreto in Milan)."

Dimitris Christoulas, Syntagma, Athens, 4 April 2012


*Georgios Tsolagoglou was a Greek military officer who was appointed Prime Minister by the German occupying forces and ruled from 1941 to 1942.