Art under attack: an unforgivable act

Lise Arlot
Jul 10, 2017 · 3 min read

How an obsession led to the mutilation of “Crisis”, a work by Tasos Nyfadopoulos a dear member of the Feral Horses’ family.

Just few days ago, a fanatic greek priest reached the public sculpture “Crisis” to disfigure it with an hammer. The artwork is an original sculpture of Tasos Nyfadopoulos, one of our Feral Artists, who donated his work to the city of Athens back in 2015.

A still from the video uploaded by the fanatic priest showing himself hammering the sculpture

The attack was video recorded and uploaded on youtube by the attacker himself. In the footage, the priest condemns the artwork for being evil and masonic, before starting hammering it: he also urges his followers in joining his cause.

The priest is not new to these videos: on his channel you can see him vandalising ATM points, wind up people against the system as he says it is evil. But this time he chose art as his target.

The news has quickly gone viral in Greece. And such a gesture has rightly been condemned by the public opinion. But more than that, there is no doubt that ignorance is the true evil here. It is not the first time, and highly likely not to be the last one either, when art and artists were victims of close-minded ideologies.

This is the reason why we at Feral Horses believe that episodes such as this should be denounced as much as possible: we believe that spreading the truth about the acts of few foolish people is the most impactful way to sensitise people to respect for art.

“Crisis” before the attack

By disfiguring “Crisis”, that priest did not just damage an art piece, result of countless hours of work, but what it stood for.

In fact the sculpture had been conceived to make people reflect about the financial crisis, which had deeply affected the greek population over the past years. It was Tasos’ s gift to men to dig deeper in the unconscious and wake up minds about the psychological effect of a financial crisis. The priest, therefore, also figuratively attacked all those who agreed with what the sculpture stands for.

After the attack, Tasos Nyfadopoulos has posted a video about the fact and his feeling towards it. We can’t help but support him in denouncing the gravity of the attack. Not simply because he is one of our Feral Artists and we believe in his talent (sentiment which is even stronger now). But also since we are of the same mind that ignorance towards art should be defeated once for all, for the benefit of everybody.

Follow Tasos Nyfadopoulos to show your support, to be kept updated and to take part in the crowdfunding campaign to fix “Crisis” later on.

Instagram Account here.

Official’s Website here.

Feral Horses’ Account here.

Tasos Nyfadopoulos talking to the press

Chiara Avino
Feral Content Creator

Feral Horses | Blog

Lise Arlot

Written by

Co-founder & Art Director @feralhorses I source and place artworks that are co-owned by hundreds of people in art institutions 🏺🖼️

Feral Horses | Blog

Co-own art

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