“When I See the Moon, It Makes Me Weep”: German-Canadian Artist Belle Santos Presents Her First Solo Exhibition in Athens

German-Canadian artist Belle Santos presents her first solo exhibition in Athens, from 13 to 31 March at Ammophila Space.

Titled “When I See the Moon, It Makes Me Weep,” the exhibition brings together works from recent years and includes video, installations, drawings and textile sculptures, through which the artist explores different atmospheres and expressions of mourning.

“I thought the world had stopped – but it was just my life that had gotten stuck in a timelapse. In parallel times.”

Focusing on the spaces where grief lingers – suppressed anger, guilt or shame ready to erupt, the lullabies we sing at night, the knots in our handkerchiefs, a forgotten memory, or the collective labour of mourning – the exhibition When I See the Moon, It Makes Me Weep approaches grief not only as a personal experience but also as a shared condition shaped through time.

Santos’s practice is deeply influenced by her training as a scenographer and costume designer, as well as by her ongoing interest in textiles in relation to the body in performance. Her work examines contemporary forms of mourning while also touching on the sociopolitical taboos that surround the subject.

What practices are necessary for us to find a path toward mourning? What textures and what scents offer comfort? Which routines and gestures provide stability when everything around us feels unstable and out of place?

Which community holds us when we feel more alone than ever? How do we move forward – not despite the pain, but with it? How do we avoid forgetting?

Her works emerge through close collaborations with musicians, performers, artists and friends. Together they have developed a multi-layered research process around practices and images of mourning, as well as around ancient and contemporary rituals of lament in relation to performance. The results of these collaborations – some of which have unfolded over several years – are presented together for the first time in this exhibition.

At Ammophila Space, three video works are presented, consisting of performances created in Kyoto and Berlin, alongside an installation featuring a multi-channel sound piece composed of lullabies and laments to the moon. The exhibition also includes a special collaboration with perfumer Meabh McCurtin (International Flavors & Fragrances – IFF), who created a scent of tears, lemon and a distilled agarwood molecule – the healing resin produced by a wounded tree.

Having carried different forms of grief in her heart, the artist wishes to offer a space where each visitor can hold their own loss – a space that functions as a vessel of memory, allowing recollections to enter and perhaps making one feel less alone within the solitude of sorrow.

Like the moon, grief never disappears entirely. Yet on certain days its luminous glow can offer comfort within the darkness of the night.

Belle Santos is a Berlin-based artist working across installation, performance, scenography and costume design. She has been a fellow of the Saison Foundation in Tokyo and has received residency fellowships at the Goethe-Institut Villa Kamogawa in Kyoto and the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. Her work explores grief, violence, girlhood and trauma, with a particular focus on their intersection with social class.