elc team
Contemporary art, textile craftsmanship and the landscape of Chios converge in a new collaboration between Greek design studio ‘ergon and internationally acclaimed artist Shezad Dawood, created exclusively for this year’s DEO.
Coinciding with the opening of Letter to an ailing Father at the historic Volissos School on Chios, Greek textile design studio ‘ergon has unveiled an exclusive collaboration with internationally acclaimed artist Shezad Dawood, created especially for this year’s edition of DEO.
Curated by Akis Kokkinos, Letter to an ailing Father brings together 14 artists from 11 countries, transforming the village of Volissos into a site of international artistic dialogue. Through works that explore memory, care, identity and collective resilience, the exhibition reflects DEO’s commitment to connecting contemporary artistic practices with the unique cultural landscape of Chios.
For the exhibition, Dawood created a new body of work inspired by the island itself, exploring the sun and the moon as symbolic forces of both care and destruction. Drawing on mythology, the landscape and the layered memories of Chios, the artist brings together painting, textiles and sound in a richly interconnected visual language.
Building on this artistic dialogue, ‘ergon, Shezad Dawood and the DEO team developed a limited series of collectible textile editions through a collaborative process in which art and design evolved side by side.
For the shirts, ‘ergon employed its signature woven fabrics, produced on mechanical looms using contemporary weaving techniques informed by the traditions of Greek textile craftsmanship. These bespoke textiles became the canvas for hand-pulled silkscreen prints incorporating elements from Dawood’s newly commissioned body of work, which traces the changing presence of the sun and moon over Chios. Drawing on the island’s mythology, landscape and layered histories, the works transform Chios into a place of memory, observation and continual transformation.
Rather than applying a standard print, each silkscreen composition was individually positioned, scaled and composed, ensuring that every shirt functions as a unique visual work in its own right. No two garments are identical.
The collaboration also extends to a limited series of collectible T-shirts, where silkscreened imagery from Dawood’s works enters into dialogue with ‘ergon’s distinctive embroidered interventions. Instead of treating the artworks as decorative reproductions, the studio integrated them into its own design vocabulary, allowing the artist’s visual language and ‘ergon’s textile practice to inform one another and create a shared aesthetic identity.
The result is a collection of one-of-a-kind wearable works that blur the boundaries between contemporary art, craftsmanship and fashion, expressing a genuine exchange between Dawood’s multidisciplinary artistic practice and ‘ergon’s distinctive approach to weaving and design.
Alongside the shirts, the collaboration includes a limited edition of collectible T-shirts, where silkscreen prints of Dawood’s imagery are combined with ‘ergon’s distinctive embroidered interventions. Rather than functioning as simple printed motifs, the artist’s works are fully integrated into the studio’s design language, creating a shared visual identity that merges contemporary art with textile craftsmanship.
The resulting collection consists of one-of-a-kind collectible textile editions, each expressing the meeting point between Dawood’s contemporary artistic practice and ‘ergon’s woven and design identity.
The collection debuted during the exhibition opening and will remain available throughout the exhibition, while supplies last. All proceeds from sales will support DEO’s future exhibitions, commissions and cultural programmes.
The collaboration reflects ‘ergon’s broader commitment to fostering creative dialogue with artists, cultural organisations and institutions, positioning clothing as a meeting point between contemporary design, Greek textile heritage and contemporary art.
As an official Supporter of this year’s DEO, ‘ergon also contributed to the wider programme of the exhibition, reaffirming its ongoing commitment to supporting initiatives that promote contemporary art, culture and creative expression.
